![](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/5\/51\/Elizabeth_May.jpg\")
Elizabeth May should probably be in the election debates this fall. She is the leader of a national party with two MPs currently serving in Ottawa, and they run a fairly full slate of candidates across the country. The Green Party of Canada is truly a national party.<\/p>\n
Of course, the other parties would like to keep her out. In an election, getting exposure is the number one priority, so limiting your opponent\u2019s exposure, if you can manage to do it, is something worth doing to improve your own chances. The big three established parties, formerly four with the Bloc, will therefore use their \u201cofficial party status\u201d in the House to try to keep May out. Since the three have a lot of pull with the broadcast consortium that televises the debates, they will generally get their way.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t understand why they have any pull at all.<\/p>\n
Frankly, in my mind the debates should be scheduled and determined by our independent election watchdog, Elections Canada. They are a neutral third party, and should therefore form the rules and tell the party leaders where and when to show up. Every election I hear about negotiations between broadcasters and the parties to make these debates happen. It\u2019s like we didn\u2019t know the damn things were coming every time the writ is dropped.<\/p>\n
As for rules, I think it should be pretty simple. For your leader to be in the debate, you should need to be running candidates in at least 25% of ridings (I think even 40% or 50%) would be reasonable, in at least two different provinces. I would also like to see the two province rule applied to the House, so that a one issue and single province party like the Bloc Quebecois could never happen again. A party should need to represent more than one narrow interest to get national funding. It would also prevent an Ontario-centric party from forming at any time in the future. It promotes nation building as opposed to regionalization. These simple rules let the Green Party, a national party, in and they keep the regional party out, namely the Bloc.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think that this is too far fetched of an idea and I really don\u2019t understand why it hasn\u2019t happened before now.<\/p>\n
I also have my own reasons, I have narrowed my choices down this year to the NDP and the Greens, and I have to admit I\u2019m leaning heavily Green. Their policy statements cover a lot of the same ground, but the Greens cover a few points that the NDP don\u2019t touch on, that I find important . It seems that the Greens are actually unafraid to take a stand. I respect that. I also want to see how the leaders of those two parties perform those nights. <\/p>\n
I want Elizabeth May to have a fair chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elizabeth May should probably be in the election debates this fall. She is the leader of a national party with two MPs currently serving in Ottawa, and they run a fairly full slate of candidates across the country. The Green Party of Canada is truly a national party. Of course, the other parties would like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-federal","category-opinion","category-political","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the100thmeridian.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the100thmeridian.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the100thmeridian.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the100thmeridian.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the100thmeridian.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the100thmeridian.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the100thmeridian.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the100thmeridian.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the100thmeridian.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}