Federal Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion says his Green Party counterpart, Elizabeth May, should be allowed to take part in the televised debate during the next election campaign because of her "long experience in the issues of sustainability and the environment."

Dion was responding to reporters' questions at an Ottawa news conference called to unveil the new Liberal shadow cabinet.

Green party Leader Elizabeth May announces her party's plan at a news conference in Ottawa on Sept. 27.
(Tom Hanson/ Canadian Press)

"I don't see why not," he said when asked whether May should be allowed to take part.

"I don't agree with her about everything," Dion added. "I'm pleased to be in a party that has a long experience about combining different goals. We're not a one-issue party."

May's party has been shut out of the leaders' debate, usually held in the last few weeks of a federal leadership campaign, because the Greens have never held a federal seat in Canada.

However, during the last election campaign, Green Party candidates won the votes of 664,068 Canadians. That works out to 4.5 per cent of all valid votes cast.

May has said those numbers prove that Canadians want to hear the party's messages about environmental and fiscal responsibility.

She and her predecessors have long lobbied a broadcast consortium comprising Canada's largest English and French television networks, including the CBC, for the right to join the leaders of the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois in the televised debates.

'Public will be enraged' if Green party shut out

"It's very critical that we be participants in the leaders' debate. I think it will be a significant factor," May said in an interview earlier this month with the Forest Newswatch newsletter. "If the Green Party is once again shut out of the debates, I think the Canadian public will be enraged. We can elect seats in the next election, and I expect we will."

The Green Party's complaints about being shut out of a 2003 Ontario leaders debate prompted an investigation by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The federal broadcast regulator later ruled against the party's bid to take part.

May's supporters have set up a website (www.demanddemocraticdebates.ca) and an online petition that push for her appearance in future nationally televised leaders' debates. The site notes that the broadcast consortium invited the Bloc Québécois to participate in the debates prior to the 1993 election, even though the Bloc did not have an elected member of Parliament and did not hold official party status.

It also points out that Reform party leader Preston Manning was granted a spot in the 1993 leaders' debate, based on the Reform party winning in one riding in 1989.