Leaders’ Debates Commission announces details on where to watch the leaders’ debates

April 15, 2025

The Leaders’ Debates Commission today announces details on where to watch the upcoming leaders’ debates, as well as the languages in which the debates will be available.

The two leaders’ debates, in French on April 16 at 8 p.m. EDT and in English on April 17 at 7 p.m. EDT, will be widely distributed on television, radio & digital platforms.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Société Radio-Canada, as the debates producer selected by the Leaders’ Debates Commission to produce the leaders’ debates for the federal general election, will distribute the signal free of charge to all interested media organizations.

A growing list of organizations will broadcast and / or stream the debates alongside the CBC and Radio-Canada’s television, digital & social media platforms. These include such national media as CTV (including CTV News Channel, CP24 and BNN Bloomberg), Global, CPAC, APTN, OMNI, AMI, CityNews 24/7, Yahoo, C-SPAN in the United States as well as BBC News and TV5 Monde internationally. Regional broadcasters include TVO, TFO and CHCH. Radio and print distributors include CBC Radio One, Bell Media’s NewsTalk stations, Corus Talk network, ICI Première, Sirius XM, L’actualité, La Converse, Les Coops de l’information, Le Devoir, The Globe and Mail, La Presse, Postmedia and the Toronto Star.

In addition, the debates will be available in a total of 15 languages. As well as both official languages, the debates will be simultaneously translated into ASL (American Sign Language) and LSQ (Langue des signes québécoise) and offered with described video and closed captioning.

In keeping with the Commission’s mandate to pay special attention to Indigenous languages, the French debate will be offered in East Cree (Northern and Southern dialects), Innu (Eastern and Western Innu dialects) and Inuktitut (Nunavik dialect) and the English debate in Plains Cree (Y dialect), Inuktitut (South Baffin dialect) and Ojibwe (Western dialect).

OMNI Television will provide live translation for both debates in another six languages: Arabic, Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin, Punjabi and Tagalog.

The debates producer, OMNI and APTN will together make all languages, as well as described video, available on YouTube channels for both debates. The YouTube channels offered by the debates producer will remain available in the days and weeks following the debates.

Information on where to watch, listen to, or stream the debates, in the language of Canadians’ choice, will be available on the website of the Leaders’ Debates Commission. This information will continue to be updated, up to the day of each debate.

About the Leaders’ Debates Commission

The Leaders’ Debates Commission is an independent and impartial public body mandated is to organize two leaders’ debates in each federal general election that are in the public interest, one in each official language, while paying special attention to Canada’s Indigenous languages. The Commission is responsible for setting out production, promotion, and distribution requirements for the leaders’ debates, while respecting journalistic independence for the content of the debates as well as setting participation criteria for the debates.

Contact:
media-medias@debates-debats.ca

Website: www.debates-debats.ca

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