Election Power Meter: Greens get the boot; Hockey wins French debate

Welcome to National Post’s campaign Power Meter, where we will track the shifting tides of the election. As the race unfolds, we’ll rank parties, candidates and other characters based on momentum, performance, and public perception. Who’s gaining ground? Who’s losing steam? Keep checking in as we measure the moments that could shape the outcome. NHL HOCKEY: We should have known when we created the Election Power Meter that NHL hockey would be the most powerful force of all. A regular season game that had a 50 per cent chance of being meaningful has singlehandedly changed the leaders’ debate schedule this week. The Montreal Canadiens will be playing for their playoff lives on Wednesday night, with a win or overtime loss guaranteeing a playoff berth. So, worried about low viewership, the debate commission has rescheduled its own program from 8 p.m. to 6 p.m . The catch? If the Columbus Blue Jackets had lost on Tuesday night, the Habs would have been playoff-bound anyway and the game wouldn’t have mattered. POWER METER RATING: UNSTOPPABLE FORCE JOB LOSSES: Reports in the Japanese press that Honda was pulling up stakes in Alliston, Ont. to relocate production to the U.S. had Liberal Leader Mark Carney so spooked by the prospect of job losses — bad news for any incumbent —  that he tried to get ahead of the news at a morning press conference on Tuesday. “It’s a war, and we can’t provide guarantees for every situation,” Carney told reporters. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war at his own morning press conference. The trouble was that the reports were apparently unfounded and were quickly denied by the company. POWER METER RATING: ELECTORAL POISON THE GREEN PARTY: The Green Party was originally expected to join the four major party leaders on Wednesday and Thursday night until a last-minute decision by the debates commission to boot them . It was a strange decision to allow the Greens in the first place, given that the party did not actually meet the requirements to participate. The party is polling at around two per cent support and doesn’t have candidates in the minimum 90 per cent of the ridings in Canada. The commission made its decision on the debates long before the deadline for candidates last week, when the Green Party revealed it only had 232 candidates for the country’s 343 ridings. Now, after some minor media pressure, the commission has reversed itself. POWER METER RATING: LOSING SPECIAL TREATMENT National Post Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.