So today, leading up to the Liberals Leadership debate tonight (the French one taking place in Montreal, as opposed to the English one taking place in…Montreal), Team Carney/Trudeau/Telford/Butts is saying, “Now is not the time to be fighting amongst each other, but to focus on what they see as the “party’s” (?) common opponents: Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and U.S. President Donald Trump.”

Again, like the Liberal Party “debates,” both Federal election debates will also happen in Montreal because….Montreal?
The leaders of the main federal political parties will be invited to a face off in mid-April —
if they meet certain criteria (?), announced the Leaders' Debates Commission Monday.
The commission, a government agency created in 2018 to organize federal leaders' debates, said the French debate will take place April 16 at 8 p.m. ET and the English debate will be held April 17 at 7 p.m. ET.
Both events will be hosted at the Maison de Radio-Canada in Montreal.
Leaders of a registered political party can only participate if they meet at least two of three criteria.
1) The commission's first requirement is that the leader's party had to be represented in the House of Commons by at least one MP before dissolution to eliminate Bernier.
2) The second is that the leader's party must be polling at least four per cent 28 days before voting day. The commission says voting intention will be determined using the most recent results of "leading national public opinion polling organizations." (
I’m assuming they’re factoring out the margin of error)

3) The third requirement is that the party must have candidates nominated in at least 90 per cent of federal ridings across Canada 28 days before the federal election…so they’ve got a week to plant the warm bodies.
The commission said it will announce which leaders will be invited to participate on April Fools Day ‘cuz, why not?
The threshold to participate this time around differs from 2021 when a party leader only had to meet one of the three conditions.
The commission is also moving ahead with a ‘simpler’ and more flexible format this year that it says will encourage "meaningful exchanges between the leaders."
The commission previously announced that, unlike the 2021 debate where multiple journalists were allowed to ask the leaders questions, the next debate will be restricted to a single moderator and the leaders themselves…eliminating unscripted questions for Carney to have to answer.
The commission picked CBC/Radio-Canada to produce and put on the debates, and named longtime TVO journalist Steve Paikin to host the English-language debate. Radio-Canada's Patrice Roy will host the French-language debate.
Other broadcasters and media organizations can distribute the debate on their platforms.
The commission's review of its 2021 format found that the debates "did not deliver as well as they should have on informing voters about parties' policies."
This time Poilievre can describe his policies that he’s espoused for years, Carney can also describe Poilievre’s policies he’s espoused for days, Singh can tell us fiction about what he’ll do with an infinite budget of other peoples money, & May can pipe in between drinks to pretend that she’s relevant.
The leaders of the main federal political parties will be invited to face off in mid-April — if they meet certain criteria, announced the Leaders' Debates Commission Monday.
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