Canadian Green Party Leader Banned from Televised Debates

Canada’s Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, is taking Canadian broadcasters to court over their decision to exclude her from the party leader debates ahead of Canada’s federal elections on October 14th. Canada’s media consortium decided to exclude her from the televised leader debates after the other participants supposedly threatened to boycott the debates if she was included.Canada’s Green Party is running candidates in 307 of Canada’s 308 ridings, has one sitting member of parliament, and in a recent poll, has a national support level of 7%. For sharp-eyed readers, note that the Bloc Quebecois only has a national support level of 8%, runs candidates only in Quebec (75 out of 308 ridings), and its party leader will be participating in the October 1st and 2nd televised debates (both the English and the French).

In the last federal election, Canadian broadcasters barred the Green Party from participating in the televised debates because it did not have an elected member of parliament. However, independent MP Blair Wilson joined the Green Party, giving it its first ever member of parliament, as well negating the position of the consortium of CBC, Radio-Canada, TVA, Global and CTV.

Sound off in the comments: do you think it should be up to party leaders to decide who gets to participate in the televised debates? Is being prevented from participating in the debates truly an

“… anti-democratic, closed-door, back-room decision making by four national party leaders who are all men, and five television executives who are all men, to keep out the one woman leader of a federal political party …” ?

Source: Toronto Star

Photo Credit: ItzaFineDay via Flickr’s Creative Commons

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