Toronto mayoral candidates Doug Ford, Olivia Chow (L) and John Tory (R) take part in a municipal debate for the upcoming city election in Toronto, September 23, 2014. Current Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, in his first public remarks since doctors revealed he has cancer, has asked residents of Canada's largest city to vote for his brother Doug, who has replaced him on the ballot in next month's mayoral election. REUTERS/Mark Blinch (CANADA - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS)

The epic and everlasting Toronto mayoral campaign is cycling through its final month and, with little more than two weeks to go before the city chooses a replacement for outgoing mayor Rob Ford, tension appears to have hit a peak rarely seen before.

As candidates spar to get their message out to voters, the process by which that message is shared has come under fire, with public debates cancelled, appearances scrubbed and orders leveled on how debates should be held, and with whom.

The debate about debates has led to a bizarre form of categorization, where “major candidates” are not the same as “legitimate candidates,” which aren’t necessarily the same as “front running candidates,” as another tier of “fringe candidates” watch from the sidelines – which, by the way, is not the same thing as “longshot candidates”.

The latest Forum Research poll found that John Tory held 39 per cent of the vote, Doug Ford held 37 per cent and Olivia Chow held 22 per cent. The remaining two per cent said they intended to vote for one of more than five dozen other candidates.

Does that mean any remaining debates should focus on those three candidates, or should they extend further than that, giving more people a chance to have their voices heard?

There are officially 65 people running for the position of Mayor of Toronto – a list that includes everything from lawyers and former public servants to high school students and marijuana advocates. Also on the list there is a noted white supremacist, a satirist who refers to himself as “supreme majesty” and candidate once identified by a national newspaper as a former hash dealer.

Having them all participate in a single debate is a mind boggling concept that defies common sense. But recently, the format of mayoral debates has become a debate issue itself, with “major” candidates demanding others be barred from participating, and others declining to share the stage with the field of also-rans.

Earlier this week, the group Women in Toronto Politics was forced to cancel a debate over how many candidates had been invited to participate. According to a press release, city-funded groups like theirs are required to issue debate invitations to all mayoral candidates.

The group had believed this meant they needed to invite all “front-running candidates,” the way independent groups are free to invite any candidates they choose.

When they realized their mistake, organizers issued invitations to the entire field of candidates, both front-running and fringe alike. This had two results: the group was inundated by lesser-known candidates who had been chomping at the bit for their chance at a public debate, and the major candidates said they weren’t willing to participate in a debate with that many moving parts.

You can’t really blame them – a two-hour debate with double-digit participants gives each candidate enough time to introduce themselves and little more.

“The size of the list does make it a real challenge,” Peter Graefe , an associate professor of political science at McMaster University, told Yahoo Canada News on Friday.

“If you have 20 candidates even and you give them three minutes to give an opening statement you have gone through an hour and everybody is asleep. You can’t really have a debate back and forth when you need to go through 20 people.

“It is one of those situations where you could make a case for the democratic principle that more people who are running should have a voice in the debate. But that comes at the price of the debates serving their purpose of allowing people to actually hear people put forward their platform, answer questions and exchanges differences of opinion.”

The issue of debate formats reached a point of satire late Thursday night when organizers of the Inner City Union debate informed the Toronto Star that Doug Ford had threatened to boycott the event if Ari Goldkind – more a longshot candidate than fringe – was allowed to participate.

What followed was a bizarre series of events in which organizers, fearing they would lose a high-profile candidate, contacted Goldkind and revoked their invitation – which had been issued long before Doug Ford had joined the race. This prompted John Tory to pull out of the debate in protest, stating that Ford can’t dictate the circumstances of a public debate, which led Ford to accuse Tory of being afraid to debate him.

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