Much has been made of Pierre Poilievre’s interactions with the media this election. The Conservative leader broke with a long-standing tradition by not allowing the press to travel with him by plane. He’s restricted media interactions to just four questions from outlets the party selects, and no follow-ups. There have been reports of Conservative flacks pressuring journalists to ask specific questions.

All that has provoked important discussion about the role of the media in covering political leaders. But the refusal of one party to make their local candidates available for media questioning—making it impossible to hear from the people who want to represent us in Parliament—deserves attention as well.

It’s not hard to see the reasoning behind the strategy. Eliminating interviews, of course, also eliminates the risk of some rogue candidate shooting their mouth off. It ensures message discipline, letting the party leader push one message with one voice.

And the Conservatives’ antagonism towards the press is no secret. A recent Leger poll found 56 percent of Conservative voters don’t trust the media’s reports on party leaders, compared to just a quarter of Liberals. Why try to reach voters on platforms they, and you, implicitly don’t trust to deliver your message?

Instead, Conservatives seem to be counting on driving their message across social media, paid advertising, events, and through the various live-streamers and podcasters and YouTubers you see at any Poilievre rally.

Whether this works remains to be seen. In an election in which the party needs to reach people beyond its base—in which convincing a middle-aged Global News viewer is probably more important than reaching someone who already follows Poilievre on X—this seems like it could be a miscalculation.

“I think there are costs for them to take this sort of strategy,” says Eric Merkley, assistant professor in political science at the University of Toronto. “If you’re not communicating to voters through mainstream news outlets, you are limiting your ability to reach those voters and to broaden your coalition.”

But if it’s unclear what effect this strategy will have on the Conservatives’ electoral chances, the effect on local democracy is self-evident. During an election, most voters don’t get a face-to-face opportunity to ask questions of their candidates. It’s the press’s job to ask questions on their behalf.

In Brampton Centre, Wency Leung questioned the 23-year-old Liberal candidate about her lack of experience so that readers could judge how she responded for themselves. In Toronto–St Paul’s, Kunal Chaudhary asked the Liberal candidate sensitive questions about antisemitism after the issue had dogged her last campaign. In Taiaiako’n–Parkdale–High Park, Dhriti Gupta let the NDP and Liberal candidates air their competing visions of what was important for that community.

Having those discussions in public, via the media, should be a fundamental part of any campaign. It’s how local democracy functions. Asking voters to elect candidates who have often never faced a single question about their record or their beliefs isn’t just thumbing your nose at the press—it’s an insult to voters.

We wanted to talk with the Conservatives about this, of course—to find out if there was a directive from the central campaign, if local candidates had been restricted from speaking with the press, if they felt the media wasn’t giving them a fair shake. They did not respond to a request for comment.