The host of Thursday’s English leaders’ debate, who brought the controversial question to the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, Yves-Francois Blanchet, was briefly justified in front of a platform of English-speaking journalists, Friday, by explaining that his question had been “verified”.
“It’s not something that I wandered over, ad lib. It was a question that was verified [«vetted », en anglais] by several levels in the organization before moving forward ”, explained the president of the polling firm Angus Reid, Shachi Kurl, who had been entrusted with the animation of the only debate of the leaders of English language.
She spoke briefly during a virtual discussion in a Twitter “space”, an event organized on Friday noon by the magazine Maclean’s and in which several journalists from English Canada took part.
The day before, Ms. Kurl asked the leader of the Bloc Québécois from the outset why her party “supports these discriminatory laws” that are Bill 96 and Bill 21 on the secularism of the state in Quebec. The question angered the principal concerned and drew criticism from all the chiefs in Ottawa, as well as from the Premier of Quebec.
According to the recording that The duty obtained, Shachi Kurl explained her choice of question by the fact that it was appropriate to inform the public outside Quebec, since, according to her, Quebec issues had already been addressed during the debate in French.
“My questions for all the chefs last night were really to try to find the gaps, the vulnerabilities,” she explains.
“There is a decision of the Superior Court of Quebec which says, which calls it discriminatory. So that is the premise, ”continued Shachi Kurl, referring to the Judge Blanchard’s judgment on Bill 21, in April.
“I understand that politically, it seems to explode a bit in Quebec. But you’ve got people watching in Lethbridge, Fort St-John, Brandon, Manitoba, and if you come up with a question to a chef, because you have to do it, because he’s there, who doesn’t show up. not a single candidate in all these other parts of the country, what are you asking him that will inform Canadians outside Quebec? “
Shachi Kurl did not respond to questions from To have to afterwards. It was not specified who, or which organization, had verified his questions. In an email to To have to, the Leaders’ Debates Commission, the group organizing the debate, assures us that she “did not participate in any of the moderator’s questions in order to respect journalistic independence. “
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