Greens held back some candidates despite giving full slate to debates commission [Video]

The Green Party says it deliberately didn’t run candidates in some ridings, even though the party submitted a full slate of potential candidates to the commission responsible for organizing the leadership debates.

The party isn’t running nominees in over 100 ridings, and Green Party Co-Leader Jonathan Pedneault told Radio-Canada last week that some of this was deliberate. He said his party made a “strategic decision” not to run candidates in ridings where they think Conservatives would likely win.

Pedneault told CBC News on Tuesday that the party pulled 15 candidates for that reason.

One of the criteria to appear at this week’s leaders’ debates is that a party endorses candidates in 90 per cent of ridings. Dropping 15 candidates would still keep the Greens above the 90 per cent threshold set out by the debate commission. 

But that leaves 96 ridings where the Greens aren’t represented after accounting for the 15 …