TORONTO, ON- August 6 - Jagdeep Chauhan (centre), 20, shows his support for Justin Trudeau on Victoria Street before the federal party leaders face off in the first election debate. August 6, 2015 Melissa Renwick/Toronto Star

To begin with, a message to any diehard People’s Party backers out there who are about to fire off an outraged tweet based on the headline alone: Please don’t take it personally, either as a supporter, or on behalf of its leader.

The arguments against including him in the draft lineup for the first-ever round of debates to be organized by the newly created commission could also apply to the leaders of any of the other ten parties set to run candidates in the upcoming election — it’s just that Maxime Bernier has a far higher public profile, as well a seat in the House of Commons, which is why the decision to leave him off the invite list for now is dominating the discussion.

Before we dive into the rationale behind the move — which, it’s worth noting, the commission itself has stressed is tentative, and could be reversed based on new evidence before the final program is set — we should take a moment to recall the commission’s ad hoc predecessor. The consortium, as it was known, was made up of the major national broadcasters and pretty much called the shots as far as which party leaders made the cut right up until 2015, when a series of increasingly petty political standoffs over who would attend which debate brought its effective monopoly over the debate process to an abrupt — and, it must be said, not entirely unwelcome — end.

The result: A hodgepodge of five stand-alone debates organized by individual media outlets and other organizations, some of which included all five major leaders while others offered spots to just the three major parties.

All things considered, it actually didn’t turn out all that badly, at least as far as democracy, with the events organized by Maclean’s and the Munk Debates being universally praised for tweaking the format to make for a much more enjoyable viewing experience.

Even so, the Liberals pledged to establish an independent commission to oversee the process in future, which came into being last year under the interim auspices of former governor general David Johnston, who served as moderator for consortium-run debates in 1979 and 1984.

As part of the setup, the government laid out what it described as “clear criteria for participation” in the first round of debates, with parties required to meet two of the three to qualify for an invite:

a) the party has at least one current MP who was elected as a member of that party

b) the party intends to endorse candidates in at least 90 per cent of ridings and

c) the party’s candidates received “at least four per cent of the number of valid votes cast” in the previous election, or “based on the recent political context, public opinion polls and previous general election results,” the commissioner believes it has “a legitimate chance” of electing candidates in the upcoming vote.

READ MORE: People’s Party yet to qualify for leaders’ debate as invites sent to five parties

Earlier this week, the commission announced that, using those criteria, it had extended invitations to the leaders of the Conservative, Liberal, New Democrat, Bloc Québécois and Green parties, but not to the People’s Party, as, in its view, it failed to meet the minimum threshold.

Although the commission accepted that the party did indeed intend to run candidates in 90 per cent of the ridings, its only current MP was, of course, elected as a Conservative.

More crucially — and, it’s fair to say, controversially — after analyzing the polling numbers provided by the party, as well as recent byelection results, the commission ruled that there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that the party has “a legitimate chance of electing more than one candidate” in the upcoming race.

“This is a preliminary assessment,” the letter noted, adding that they will “continue to evaluate the People’s Party of Canada’s qualification,” and inviting the party to “submit a list of three to five ridings that [it] believes are most likely to elect a candidate.”

Not surprisingly, Team Bernier was swift to react, posting an open response to the commission expressing Bernier’s deep disappointment with the preliminary ruling, which, it argued, “relied solely on polls, and did not consider the recent political context,” particularly the global surge in support for “populist parties,” which “suggests” that the People’s Party has “an excellent chance of rapid growth and electing candidates.”

Meanwhile, political columnists — mostly, although not all, of the small-c conservative or contrarian stripe — compared the move to snub Bernier with the consortium’s long-standing refusal to invite Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, which lasted until 2008, when the Liberals threatened to boycott the debate unless May was invited, and the Conservatives and New Democrats vowed to do the same if she was.

The key difference, of course, is that this time around, the commission is working within publicly available parameters that were established through legislation and order-in-council, which is a far different scenario than the black box that surrounded deliberations during the era of the consortium.

This time around, however, there’s no indication that any of the other parties are prepared to pull their leaders from the program unless Bernier gets a spot.

Even more awkwardly for those drawing parallels with the Greens, had these criteria been in place in 2008, May would have automatically qualified for inclusion despite not having elected a member under its banner, as the Greens netted 4.48 per cent of the vote under her predecessor, Jim Harris.

And the kicker: Bernier may ultimately make it on stage after all.

Unlike the consortium, there’s an avenue for appeal, albeit one that will require the party to name up to five specific ridings where it has a “legitimate” chance of winning. In that particular context, however, simply coming up with polls that show the party with more than 4 per cent support in those ridings wouldn’t be enough to override the original decision.

Whether by accident or design, the government seems to have come up with a formula that strikes the right balance between ensuring smaller nonmainstream parties aren’t automatically left off the invite list while maintaining a minimum threshold for electoral viability that should, at least in theory, give Canadians the opportunity to assess party leaders with at least some chance of winning enough seats to take power.