John,
You won’t believe this.
The Leaders’ Debates
Commission has once again changed its criteria so they can easily
exclude the PPC on the basis of dubious polls, as they did in 2021.
Not only that, but they lost our submission about
these criteria when they consulted political parties last
year!
Let me explain.
You probably remember
that I was invited to the debates during the 2019 election.
But in 2021, the Commission changed its
criteria and I ended up not being invited.
I was disqualified
because the PPC didn’t get at least 4% on average in polls published
at the beginning of the campaign.
However, that’s
because they used dubious polling results in which the PPC barely
registered.
For that reason, our average was
only 3.27%, even though our support was in fact much higher and we
ended up scoring 4.9% on election day.
It’s important to note
that another criterion in 2021, which we didn’t meet at the time but
do meet today, was to have scored at least 4% in the previous election.
If the
Commission had kept the same criteria, I would have automatically
qualified to take part in this year’s debates.
But, surprise, surprise! Yesterday the Commission announced
another change in their participation criteria, and dropped that one
that would have automatically qualified me!
This time, parties
must now meet not one, but two of these three criteria: 1) have at
least one MP; 2) have at least 4% on average in the polls at the
beginning of the campaign; or 3) run candidates in at least 90% of
ridings.
It’s still
possible for the PPC to qualify, but we are again at the mercy of
dubious polls, some of which we know deliberately exclude the PPC from
the list of potential responses, which inevitably understates our
level of support.
But that’s not all.
The
Commission states in its document that when consulting the parties
about the new rules last year, they got submissions from all major
parties, but not ours, which argued that the 2021 rules should be
kept.
They responded to us today that there was some
glitch in their email system, but that they had finally found our
message and will now review it!!!
Nobody is naïve
enough to believe that this will make any difference.
John, isn’t it weird that a Commission is kept alive, and
public funds are spent to carry consultations with experts and
parties, only to come up every few years with new rules that make the
participation of the PPC less likely?
This change only
has one obvious purpose, one that unites the whole political
establishment in Ottawa: Making it easier to exclude the PPC.
These new
rules only affect me, the leader of the only new party to emerge
forcefully on the federal political scene in decades, and none of the
other leaders expected to participate.
They
want to deny a voice to 840,000 Canadian voters who supported the PPC
in 2021.
And coincidentally, the only submission they lost
when consulting the parties is ours!
What an absurd farce!
John, once again we have proof that the establishment will
do anything, including manipulate our democratic system, to kill our
Party.
But they won’t succeed if we fight back.
Please donate $25 today so we can put more money aside
for the election campaign and show them how wrong they
are!
Thank you,
-Max
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