A last-ditch effort by the Green Party to gain a spot in the leaders' debates has been rejected by a federal appeals court.
Federal Court of Appeal Judge Marc Nadon decided Tuesday he would not expedite the court process, meaning a decision cannot come down in time for Green Party Leader Elizabeth May to join the debate.
Green Party lawyer Peter Rosenthal had hoped the court would agree to expedite the process so that the ruling could be made before next Tuesday's English-language debate.
Rosenthal has argued that the guidelines used to decide who is and isn't included in the debates are arbitrarily determined each election by a media consortium and need to be updated.
"The consortium does what it wants to, and in my view, the CRTC is in error in not regulating them in this respect. And that's what we tried to get the Federal Court of Appeal here to require of the CRTC," Rosenthal told Â鶹´«Ã½ Channel, after the decision.
The broadcast consortium organizing the debates had argued there was not enough time for the court to fully consider the issue before the April 12 English-language debate. (The French-language debate will take place two days later.)
"The organization of the Leaders' Debates 2011 is going ahead as planned," the consortium said in a news release after the Federal Court of Appeal decision.
The consortium has maintained that only parties with seats in Parliament can take part in the debates -- a decision that leaves out the Greens because they did not hold any seats at dissolution.
May was allowed to take part in the leaders' debates in the previous federal election in 2008. However, at that time an independent MP, who had not been elected as a Green, had affiliated himself with the party and was sitting in Commons as a Green MP.
May's party has sought public support for her inclusion in the debates, urging Canadians to put pressure on consortium members to "press the networks to include Elizabeth May."
Minutes before Green party lawyers were due to enter the Federal Court of Appeal on Tuesday morning, May wrote on Twitter that she was "hoping for a hearing this week." She suggested that the public wanted to see her take part in the leaders' debates.
"Why won't the media execs just accept what Canadians want?" May asked on Twitter.
Former Green Party leader, Jim Harris, said it was "a complete outrage" that May was not invited to participate in the televised debates.
"The party has a million votes," he told CTV's Power Play, adding that it's running candidates in every riding across the country -- unlike the Bloc Quebecois.
Harris also said the Greens are especially popular with young voters, a demographic he said feels increasingly disenfranchised.
Debate about the debate has taken up an unusual amount of time for the leaders in this election campaign. Last week, when asked whether May should be allowed to take part, Prime Minister Stephen Harper suggested that perhaps the debate should include only him and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, since they were the only realistic potential winners.
However, when Ignatieff tried to take Harper up on the offer of a one-on-one debate, he backed down, saying the Conservatives were only interested in one leaders debate in English and one in French -- and that was the televised event with the four main leaders.
