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Green Leader Elizabeth May will get a chance to debate her fellow party leaders after all.

The broadcasters consortium has invited Ms. May to the Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 debates, and received assurances from the other four party leaders that they will attend if Ms. May is invited, spokesman Jason MacDonald confirmed to The Globe and Mail.

The broadcasters made the change after Prime Minister Stephen Harper and NDP Leader Jack Layton both backed down from their opposition to Ms. May's involvement.

Ms. May shouted with joy in her New Glasgow, N.S. campaign office as she watched a television report that the Conservatives had backed down from their threat to boycott the debates if the Green leader was invited.

The Conservative announcement came just minutes after NDP leader Jack Layton came to the same decision.

Less than two hours later, she received official confirmation from the consortium of broadcasters and was ordering champagne for her Green Party staff.

"We're jubilant here and it's all thanks to Canadians from coast to coast who could not stand such an unfair decision," Ms. May told reporters in her campaign office. "The response from Canadians has been just overwhelming and it really inspires you to know that democracy works, that if you get engaged and involved you can actually change decisions. And I don't know that Canadians have ever before managed so effectively to make Stephen Harper back down. I think it's a good precedent."

The Green Leader said Mr. Harper and Mr. Layton's threats of boycotting the debates were simply untenable once Tory and NDP supporters became aware.

As for the debate, Ms. May promised to put in practice her goal of doing things differently through unscripted answers and less partisanship.

"I hope my participation will actually make the debates more useful for the voter," she said. "That's my main goal: To take them away from the pre-scripted, pre-prepared little advertisements for oneself that party leaders usually do and get into something more spontaneous."

The reversals could be a pivotal point in this federal election campaign.

Dogged by protesters and divisions within the ranks of his own party, Mr. Layton told reporters during a visit to a solar-panel company here Wednesday that the debate about the debate has become an unwanted distraction.

“I have only one condition for this debate, that the Prime Minister is there, because I want to debate the issues with him,” said Mr. Layton. “I don't want to be debating the debate forever.”

Mr. Layton's change of heart put the onus squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Harper to decide where the block against Ms. May will remain.

Conservative spokesman Kory Teneycke said the Tories are dropping their opposition to Ms. May participating in the debate, saying they don't want to be the odd man out on the matter.

“It appears the NDP has changed their position. Our position has been to support the NDP on this point of principle. We are not going to be the only ones to boycott the debate,” Mr. Teneycke said.

He said the leaders debate is now shaping up to be a “debate among parties of the left ,” a statement that echoes the Conservative election message that all the party's opponents hail from the left side of the political spectrum

Mr. Tenecyke said it should really only be fair now that all parties are allowed to bring their candidate for Central Nova to the debate. He was referring to the fact that Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has agreed not to run one of his party's candidates in the Nova Scotia riding, leaving the field more open for Ms. May.

Liberal Senator Jim Munson said the announcements showed his party had been correct to accept the Green presence.

“Let the record show we were on the side of the angels,” he said.

The dramatic turn-about came in the early afternoon of a fiery Day 4 on the election campaign, a day that served up policy announcements and pointed barbs aplenty.

Mr. Harper has vowed to completely withdraw Canadian troops from Afghanistan in 2011 – a promise that goes beyond a Parliamentary motion this year which merely committed to pull soldiers out of Kandahar province.

Military analysts have warned it's a bad idea strategically to set a definite end date for withdrawing from Afghanistan but Mr. Harper says he thinks even the Canadian military wants to quit the country in 2011.

“The mission as we have known it – we intend to end it,” Mr. Harper said.

The NDP and Conservatives also presented very different approaches to dealing with the ailing manufacturing sector.

As Ford Motor Co. announced plans to eliminate about 500 jobs at its assembly plant in Oakville, Ont., Mr. Layton outlined an $8-billion spending program to create 40,000 new jobs to replace those lost in the weakened industrial economy.

“The manufacturing sector has been hit hard,” Mr. Layton said out front of the giant General Motors plant in this industrial city east of Toronto where a thousand jobs were lost in January and more are on the block.

“Jobs are disappearing overseas. (Conservative Leader Stephen) Harper is doing nothing and proposes to do nothing more.”

However the Conservative Leader had frank words for Canadians who have lost their jobs in recent months and years as the economy slowed, saying Ottawa cannot assure people their jobs are safe.

“I think you have to be honest with people: the government can't go in and say ‘We can guarantee your job',” he said. “We can't protect your job.”

“There is no point in telling people we can solve all the problems of Ford. Ford is going to have to manage some of them.”

Meanwhile the Bloc Québécois found itself under a double-barrage as both separatists and Conservatives kicked into the sovereigntist part.

Jacques Brassard, a former Parti Québécois minister on the provincial stage, launched his tirade in a Montreal newspaper, arguing that the Bloc is losing touch with a number of Quebeckers, while the Conservative Party increased its attacks on the Bloc by pointing out that it has made over 1,000 promises since 1990.

“A vote on the Bloc is a wasted vote – Quebeckers are already realizing the Bloc can't deliver, and are already turning their back on this powerless party,” Conservative candidate and former senator Michael Fortier said.

And Newfoundland and Labrador's Premier Danny Williams launched his sharpest broadside yet at Mr. Harper, saying a Harper majority “would be one of the most negative political events in Canadian history.”

“When we vote, I would rather that we stand on the solid ground of principles than on the shaky ground of broken promises,” Mr. Williams told a business lunch in St. John's. “If you believe the country deserves better, then you know what to do.”

But for Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, the day just got better and better. Wednesday morning began with a flurry of support from people on the campaign trail in Nova Scotia.

That was quickly followed up by Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion saying he would call the five-network consortium that runs the debates — CBC, Radio-Canada, CTV, Global and TVA — to ask for an explanation of Ms. May's exclusion in the televised leaders debates for Oct. 1 and 2.

The New Democrats and the Conservatives had said earlier this week that they would not participate if Ms. May were allowed on the stage.

But Mr. Layton rescinded that threat Wednesday afternoon. “If the Prime Minister is there, I will be there, period,” he said.

- With files from Canadian Press

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