An English-language debate before the fall election in Quebec will no longer go ahead after Premier François Legault and another party leader declined to participate.
A spokesperson for the premier confirmed Friday they had “declined the invitations for two debates, one of which is in English.”
“The premier will already take part in the debates organized by the TVA and Radio-Canada networks,” Ewan Sauves said in an email. “It’s important to understand that each debate requires significant and non-negligible preparation time.”
Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon also revealed he would not take part in the event, saying the “official and common language in Quebec is French.”
“We will of course be available to answer questions from English-speaking journalists,” he wrote on Twitter.
The other three parties in the legislature, however, said their leaders would attend.
Quebec Liberal Party Leader Dominique Anglade issued a statement in the afternoon to say she planned to participate in the debate. She accused Legault of “turning his back on English-speaking Quebecers.”
“We, Liberals, will always seek to form a government that represents all Quebecers regardless of the language you speak or where you come from,” she said.
Quebec Conservative Party Leader Éric Duhaime said he would debate in English. Québec solidaire spokeswoman Sandrine Bourque says the party’s candidate for premier, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, would attend even if the CAQ and the PQ bowed out.
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Montreal’s major English-language broadcast media organizations had invited the leaders of each main political party to a 90-minute debate on Sept. 20 before Quebecers head to the polls on Oct. 3.
The event was intended to be live-streamed on CBC, CTV, Global and CJAD, the organizations that make up the English media debate consortium.
The consortium said the goal was to permit “all Quebecers to hear the party leaders discuss, debate and question their vision and priorities for Quebec and help all voters make an informed choice.”
“Without the participation of all the main party leaders, the English-language media consortium representatives agree it would not be a fair and informative exercise,” the consortium said in a statement issued Friday.
“As a result there will be no English-language party leaders debate in this election campaign.”
In 2018, the leaders of the province’s main provincial parties took part in a historic English-language debate. Among them was Legault before the Coalition Avenir Québec was voted into power for the first time.
At the time, Legault wrote on social media that he accepted the invitation “with great pleasure.”
— with files from The Canadian Press