Forgive me for talking shop at first. Thursday’s commission-certified French-language debate was the best-run of the four-ish debates this campaign has seen, and I suspect you’ll read the same conclusion from just about everyone who writes about it.
There are reasons for this.
Everyone is praising Patrice Roy, a Radio-Canada anchor and veteran broadcast professional who was the main leader-wrangler at the Museum of History in Gatineau. Properly so. But Roy was able to lead, clearly, while his colleagues from the French-language consortium took a secondary role, because he was the only broadcaster among them. (The others were Hélène Buzzetti from Le Devoir; Alec Castonguay from L’actualité; François Cardinal from La Presse; and Patricia Cloutier from Le Soleil.) Quebec’s main private broadcaster, TVA, sat this debate out and ran its own solid debate with a single moderator a week ago.
Monday’s English debate, on the other hand, was a broadcast traffic jam with the CBC, CTV and Global all represented. Since none of those organizations would cede any ground to the others, the last two participating organizations, the Toronto Star and Huffington Post, got equal treatment too. And things were a bit more chaotic.
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See Also:
(1) Federal leaders still don’t seem to understand the attorney general’s role
(2) National climate debate cancelled after Conservatives refuse to participate
(3) European-built fighter aircraft: did they ever stand a chance in Canada’s competition?
