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Photo by Fred Thornhill-Pool/The Canadian Press

As such, the commission was an opportunity to bring some fairness and impartiality to such eternally thorny questions as who should be allowed to participate. Had there been a concerted attempt to find some consensus on these, whether among the parties or the broader public, the result might have become the template, not only for the official debates, but for the unofficial ones as well.

Instead, the rules of the debates were defined even before the commission had been struck — unilaterally, by the party in power. Not only would there be only two debates — there should be at least five — but the Liberals took it upon themselves to decide which other parties would be allowed to share the stage with them: not by name, to be sure, but by virtue of supposedly objective criteria whose effect is the same.

Thus, according to Order in Council 2018-1322, establishing the commission, a party, to be eligible, must be represented in the House of Commons (“by a member of Parliament who was elected as a member of that party”). It must also have candidates running in at last 90 per cent of the ridings. Last, it must have obtained at least four per cent of the vote in the last election, or have “a legitimate chance” at electing members in the next.

If the 2015 debates were a dubious advance over the consortium model, the current approach looks to be a significant step backwards

Oh, and: it only has to meet two of the three. So whereas the rules would otherwise include only the main national parties, they also neatly make room for the Bloc Quebecois — while excluding the People’s Party of Canada, though it might well meet all three criteria. Obviously there have to be some rules about who gets in, but the rules have to be fair, and to be seen to be fair. These, rather, seem to have been tailored to the designs of the established parties.