In Canada's 2021 election, Maxime Bernier didn't qualify for the Leaders' debate, but his People's Party still received 4.9% of the vote — enough to qualify him for the next election. So the Leaders' Debates Commission changed the rules.
The Leaders’ Debates Commission is again trying to exclude Maxime Bernier | People's Party of Canada (news release):
January 15, 2025 — "The Leaders’ Debates Commission has once again changed its criteria so they can easily exclude the leader of the People’s Party on the basis of dubious polls, as they did in 2021.
"In 2021, parties needed to meet one of three criteria to qualify: 1) have at least one MP; 2) have had at least 4% of the total vote in the previous election; or 3) have at least 4% on average in polls at the beginning of the campaign. The PPC did not meet 1) and 2), and its leader was disqualified on 3) by using dubious polling results in which the PPC barely registered, which gave the party an average of only 3.27%, even though its support was clearly much higher and it ended up scoring 4.9% on election day.
Maxime Bernier in 2023. Photo by Yan Parisien.
"Mr. Bernier would automatically qualify to take part in this year’s debates on the basis of criterion 2) if the Commission had kept the same criteria. However, yesterday, the Commission announced a key change, dropping that criterion and requiring that parties must now meet not one, but two of these three criteria: 1) have at least one MP; 2) have at least 4% on average in the polls at the beginning of the campaign; or 3) run candidates in at least 90% of ridings....
[T]he Commission states in its document that when consulting the parties about the new rules last year, 'The Commission received submissions from the Bloc Quebecois, the Conservative Party of Canada, the Green Party of Canada, the Liberal Party of Canada, and the New Democratic Party of Canada.' This is not true. A PPC staffer sent a submission to Michel Cormier, the Commission’s Executive Director, on July 3 2024, two days before the deadline, in which it was argued that the Commission should keep the same criteria as in 2021.
"Not only is the Commission trying to exclude Mr. Bernier from the debates, but it seems like it did not take the PPC submission into account.
Maxime Bernier commented:
This change only has one obvious purpose, one that unites the whole political establishment in Ottawa: Making it easier to exclude the PPC. These new rules only affect me, the leader of the only new party to emerge forcefully on the federal political scene in decades, and none of the other leaders expected to participate. They want to deny a voice to 840,000 Canadian voters who supported the PPC in 2021.
It’s still possible for the PPC to qualify of course, but we are again at the mercy of dubious polls, some of which we know deliberately exclude the PPC from the list of potential responses, which inevitably understates our level of support.
Instead of using the hard data that are the results of the last election, which prove without doubt that the PPC is one of the major parties whose voice is essential in Canadian policy debates, and, the Commission has chosen to rely on fleeting data that can easily be manipulated and will be obsolete a few weeks later.
Why does the Commission need to change its criteria every electoral cycle? Isn’t it weird that a Commission is kept alive, and public funds are spent to carry consultations with experts and parties, only to come up every few years with new rules that make the participation of the PPC more difficult? Does it exist to facilitate democratic debates or to censor a populist voice?”
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