Conservatives a No-Show at All Candidates Debate

Candidates Digby, Fakirini, Grant, and Ede at the debate

With five more days to go until the federal election, the Dunbar Residents Association organised an all candidates' debate, featuring the people -- all men -- who are running to represent Vancouver Quadra.

It was held at Immaculate Conception Parish Gymnasium, a much newer facility compared to the one that is usually used across the street at St Philips Anglican Church.

The bigger venue however made it look like residents in the area didn't bother to show up, as attendance was on the low side; perhaps it was because they had already voted and didn't see the point in going to the debate.

Others didn't come because the Conservative candidate, Ken Charko -- who owns Dunbar Theatre -- did not reply to the invitation. This is not surprising since it has been reported across the country that Conservative candidates have not attended debates in their ridings throughout the campaign. Some residents were keen to challenge Charko tonight, but he was a no-show.

Even though we had cast our ballots, we wanted to check out the candidates anyway.

Tom Digby is running for the Green Party, and reminded people that he is currently on the Vancouver Park Board where he is keen on preserving Stanley Park. He has a masters degree in molecular biology and is an intellectual property lawyer. So he embodies the spirit of the Green Party and brought up climate change a few times.

Alim Fakirani represents the NDP. He is a teacher and looking to pivot into politics and was an eloquent speaker. He reminded the crowd of how the NDP is working hard to bring benefits to ordinary Canadians like dental care and healthcare. However, he may have soured some people in the audience when he reiterated the rich need to be taxed more...

Wade Grant is with the Liberals, and got the most applause from the audience espousing his party's views and throwing in Mark Carney's name a few times. The 46-year-old introduced himself as someone who has grown up in Vancouver Quadra and is concerned about the salmon population, and also concerned about young families struggling to survive.

John Odan Ede is the People's Party of Canada's candidate. The chemical engineer immigrated here in 2017 with his family and a masters in public policy and global affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is very passionate about democracy. The People's Party of Canada was formed in 2018 by Maxime Bernier, a former Conservative MP and cabinet minister in Stephen Harper's government.

We only stayed for the first half, with some interesting questions like would you porogue parliament, what do you agree about your opponents' platforms, and their opinion of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Most of the questions were not what most people would be concerned about, but we didn't stay long enough to hear the others asked by the moderator. Nevertheless it was good to see how passionate the candidates are and how disappointed they were that the Conservatives' Charko did not show up!

We were too.