The Canadian government is billing taxpayers more than $9 million to produce the Canadian election debates that private media used to pay for, according to records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).
“Why do taxpayers have to pay for debates that every news outlet in the country will cover anyway?” said CTF federal director Franco Terrazzano on Wednesday. “Politicians will figure out a way to get their mugs in front of a camera, so taxpayers don’t need to be paying for it.”
The Canadian government formed the Leaders’ Debate Commission in 2018 to run election debates with federal funding. The private sector used to manage the debates through a consortium of television networks at no cost to taxpayers.
The commission, the CTF said, has spent more than $4.3 million of taxpayer money from 2018-2021 and plans to spend more than $4.4 million from 2021-2022.
The records show that the Leaders’ Debate Commission gave $1.7 million to CBC to produce the 2019 debates and another $2 million “committed” for 2021-2022. According to the records, the commission has directed $300,000 to lawyers while losing two lawsuits and has earmarked another $400,000 for lawyers in 2021-2022.
Conservative MP Corey Tochor has questioned the value of the commission and whether it should exist.
“People will remember the one disastrous debate [in 2021] where they had nine different MCs or commissioners on the stage,” said Tochor. “It was a gong show.”
Tochor said that he would prefer debates be run by the private sector like they used to be in the past.
The commission also admitted it paid millions of dollars to the CBC for providing the production contract to 10 news organizations, with the state broadcaster acting on behalf of the group.
CBC received $1.4 billion in federal funding last year.
“Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for this when it’s clear businesses are capable of broadcasting the debates,” said Terrazzano. “The feds are already more than $1 trillion in debt, and ending the government’s debate commission is a prime place for savings.”
While the commission was created to “improve access to debates,” its commitment to journalistic freedom was also challenged in court after it blocked True North journalist Andrew Lawton and Rebel News reporters David Menzies and Keean Bexte from attending the federal election debates in 2019.
True North and Rebel took the commission to court and were granted injunctions allowing their journalists to attend hours before the first debate started.
The judge found the commission’s decisions “lacking in discernible rationality and logic, and thus…neither justified nor intelligible.”
