The television consortium’s decision to exclude Green Party Leader Elizabeth May from the election campaign debates is an accurate reflection of her party’s diminishing contribution to the national conversation and the debatable relevance of her debut appearance at the same table in 2008.

It may also be the best thing that could have happened to her at this early stage in the campaign; the Green Party of Canada was otherwise at great risk of spending it completely on the sidelines.

Until the networks’ decision prompted a predictable social media firestorm, many voters might have been forgiven for having forgotten the existence of the Green party and its feisty leader.

Since the last election, the party has had more presence in the polls than in the daily life of the nation.

Part of the reason for that has to do with the relative disappearance of the climate change issue from the federal radar.

The recession combined with a Liberal realignment on other policy fronts have pushed the environment down the list of top-of-mind issues on Parliament Hill.

While the Green party insists that it is about more than the environment, that remains its marquee issue.

But a lower national profile is also the price to pay for May’s decision to focus on winning a British Columbia seat for herself in this election. Running a local campaign three time zones away from Parliament Hill is a different proposition from leading a national parade.

The consortium’s decision to exclude May is based on what seems to many like a technicality —that the Greens are no longer represented in the Commons — but it was on the basis of their parties’ actual presence in the House that Preston Manning and Lucien Bouchard were included in the 1993 debates.

At the time neither the Bloc Québécois nor the Reform Party ran candidates across the country but both came out of the 1993 campaign with more MPs than two of the three traditional parties.

In the following election, it would have been hard to shut out a party like the Bloc because it did not run candidates across the country while the NDP and the Tories, who no longer commanded enough MPs to be officially recognized as parties in the House of Commons, were back on the podium.

As of that period, the nature of the election debates changed and some would argue that they took a turn for the worse.

It is an understatement to say that the 2008 debates inspired more frustration than enlightenment and May — among others — contributed to their failure.

She spent less time showcasing what made the Green party distinct from the chorus of her opponents than contributing to a cacophonic critique of the Conservative incumbent.

The larger reality is that the federal leaders are only on a level playing field for the time of a debate or two.

But the options of a two-tier debate or a duel between Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff both involve an even greater level of distortion.

A one-on-one debate between the Liberal and Conservative leaders would be completely divorced from the electoral reality of regions such as Quebec and the Prairies.

In a pre-election CROP poll, the Liberals barely beat the Greens for support in francophone Quebec.

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In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, shifting votes from the NDP to the Liberals is usually a formula for electing more Conservatives.

Over the past three minority Parliaments, every elected leader has had occasion to play a pivotal role in the development of policy and, in a couple of instances, the crafting of a potential alternative government.

In an ideal world, the election debates should feature leaders with some actual parliamentary presence and, based on that representation, second-tier parties in the House of Commons should not be treated as second-class debate players.

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