policy

44th General Election Leaders' Debates

The French language debate will be held on Sept. 8 from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. and will be moderated by Radio-Canada’s Patrice Roy, alongside journalists Hélène Buzzetti of Les coops de l’information, L’actualité’s Guillaume Bourgault-Côté, La Presse’s Paul Journet, and Marie Vastel of Le Devoir,

The English-language debate will be held  on Sept. 9 from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. and will be moderated by the president of the Angus Reid Institute, Shachi Kurl. She will be accompanied by Rosemary Barton of CBC News, Melissa Ridgen of APTN News, Global News’ Mercedes Stephenson and CTV News’ Evan Solomon.

In addition to Canada’s two official languages, the debate will be translated into American Sign Language, Langue des Signes Québécoise and six Indigenous languages. It will also be broadcast by OMNI Television, which will accommodate live translation for both debates in six languages: Arabic, Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Tagalog.

Leaders’ Debates Commission

We are an independent and impartial public body mandated to organize two leaders' debates for the next federal general election, one in each official language, while paying special attention to Canada's Indigenous languages.

Our role is to engage a debates producer, set participation criteria, determine which political leaders are invited to participate in the leaders' debates, and work with the debates producer to develop a format that reflects the public interest, while respecting journalistic independence.

The Commission's objective is to make debates a more predictable, reliable and stable element of federal election campaigns.

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