The Ontario People’s Front Leader Raymond Samuels has once again spoken out on the level of corruption and electoral malpractices being perpetrated, especially during the ongoing candidate debate at the Ottawa-Centre.

There are several levels of censorship and manipulation being intentionally meted out to certain candidates, said Samuels, and it is nothing like he has ever experienced before during the elections. Samuels has previously been nominated federally as far back as 1993 under the Mel Hurtig national party in Ottawa and was also a candidate for The Hon. Paul Hellyer. He has been in numerous electoral debates including one with the former leader of the New Democratic Party John Edward “Ed” Broadbent.

Previously, candidates were allowed to speak freely and debate each other without any sense of manipulation and filtering, unlike what is being witnessed currently, said Samuels. In a video published earlier in May, he spoke about unfair censorship by a former CBC anchor, Lucy Van Oldenbarneveld during the Ottawa-Centre debate. Samuels is running as a candidate in Ottawa Centre and was a participant at the Glebe Community Centre All-Candidates Debate where he was scheduled to share his ambitions and dedication to promoting free speech and transparency, particularly around the public dissemination of information.

However, Oldenbarneveld, who was the moderator for that session, was said to have rudely interrupted and cut-off Samuels' speech as he began speaking on a topic that must’ve been perceived as a threat to their political agenda—since it was centred around the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and how it’s being used as a tool for control by the government and big pharmaceutical companies.

In another similar debate attended by the Ontario People’s Front in Ottawa centre on 17 May, which involved various community associations such as the Hampton Iona, McKellar Park Carlington, Champlain Park Civic Hospital, Wellington Village Westborough and Westborough beach, where candidates were expected to be treated equally, the moderator, Amanda Pfeffer was, unfortunately, another bias CBC anchor. The state-owned public broadcaster was primarily promoting candidates of four main parties—the Liberal Party, Conservative Party, New Democratic Party (NDP) and Green Party—while neglecting candidates from other parties by failing to give them adequate airtime, said Samuels in a video. 

The integrity of these debates seems to have been compromised to push a political agenda, said Samuels, especially since they now appear scripted and highly manipulated to prevent certain candidates from sharing their opinions on candid issues.  Recently, the Ontario Party Leader Derek Sloan revealed that he alongside many other candidates running for premier was excluded from attending a provincial election debate that was held on 16 May.

“This is more election interference by the elites, just like when Big Tech banned my Twitter account for saying things they didn’t like,” said Sloan in a statement. “Preventing the leader of a political party with a sitting MPP from participating in leadership debates is nothing less than election tampering and is a profoundly anti-democratic act.”

Most notably, leaders of both the Ontario Party and the New Blue Party were excluded from the official election debate, while leaders of the Conservative Party, Liberals, NPD and Green Party were invited. This same set of leaders were also exclusively invited to another event that focused on thrashing issues affecting Northern Ontario.

The continuous exclusion of perceived minority candidates from official electoral debates is worrisome to the democracy of Canada as manipulated information prevents the people from making the right electoral decisions, said Samuels.