Hey hey, Elizabeth May!

Refusing Green Party leader Elizabeth May a seat at the table during the televised federal election debates has been explained by a spokesperson for the broadcast consortium (CBC, CTV, Radio Canada, Global and TVA) as "a programming decision." And it may have been that. All of us, in  or out of the industry, have been forced to endure bad programming decisions.

If the broadcast consortium wanted interesting programming, they would include Ms. May, who gave the 2008 debates their few bright moments. But a better idea, according to the Pointless Digressions broadcast consortium, would be to run the debates in the form of a tennis tournament. Each leader would be seeded, and there would be a series of matches, the loser in each case being eliminated, leading to the final confrontation. 

Who would win? No one can say, but our money--such as it is--is on Elizabeth May, the Serena Williams of Canadian politics.