Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would go back to what I said. If the debate is available to everybody, people can do what they want with it. “Watch our debate because we're featuring this kind of input. Watch this debate because we're featuring that kind of input. We're providing this accessibility, this kind

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It could be numbers of debates, but available to any outlet that wants them. As long as they take the substance of the debate, they can treat it differently in terms of their audience and how they want to encourage participation.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We're not here to weigh in on what model you come down on. The idea is that if you can find predictability and determine participation and figure out a way to encourage partnership—I don't know whether that requires an office-holder or a different kind of approach—and you can a

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's always been an important riding. It's a contested riding.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We're into new territory. With the last election and the collapse of the consortium model, we're into new territory. It's a blank canvas. The idea of how to make them more accessible I think comes back to the third “p” that we talked about, the partnership idea. I'll be really i

Procedure and House Affairs committee  This is always a bit of a tricky question. I was principally involved in that decision-making, and my thinking was that these were all reputable organizations trying something new. They're all known for good journalism, so we took the position that it would be in the greater inte

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Let me answer that in two ways. The biggest challenge for us is working on trying to figure out what's needed to ensure the three Ps that Catherine talked about. How do we ensure that if we're going to have debates, we know when they are, who's attending, and who's going to carr

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thanks very much.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  To be specific, are you talking about purchasing the consortium debates or all the debates we've carried in the last election?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Okay.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Right. There's typically a fee that all broadcasters pay to be part of the consortium debate. I'm not sure that's public information or if people give out that fee. It's part of a business arrangement, so I'm not sure I'm at liberty to say what that is today.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Our role is never as important as at election time, bringing us to the committee’s topic of study: the proposal to create a commission or an independent commissioner responsible for overseeing leaders’ debates during federal election campaigns. I would like to take a moment to t