As promised, here we go…
Wednesday evening was the night of the second all-candidates election forum in the riding of Edmonton Strathcona. Held at the Myer Horowitz Theatre in the University of Alberta Students’ Union Building, six out of the seven candidates duked it out (Marijuana Party candidate, Dave Dowling, was unaccounted for…).
The evening started out great, the candidates showed up and respectfully lined up on stage, waiting to speak to the mass of about 200-300 Edmonton Strathconians who trekked the -5 snowless conditions to be there.
As things started out, the candidates first answered three questions prepared by the Advocacy Department of the U of A Students’ Union (the wonderful group who organized the event). The three included questions on topics ranging from student debt to youth apathy. Though most of the answers were standard, Conservative incumbent, Rahim Jaffer, brought up the idea of Income-Contingent Student Loan Repayment. An idea, which isn’t bad on it’s own, just that every jurisdiction which has enacted it has seen tuition deregulation and massive tuition hikes, which equals larger student debt.
Mr. Jaffer of course, was a smooth operator as usual. Watching from the audience, you could tell he’d done this a couple times before (finishing his answers 58 seconds on the minute, etc).
Andy Hladyshevsky, the Liberal Candidate, was in our mind, the best speaker of the evening. He answered all the questions with energy, and left you remembering his comments afterwards.
Hladyshevsky Quote of the evening: “I don’t like the way the Conservatives are spreading the word ‘corruption’ like ketchup into every thing that every good person in government stands for.”
Linda Duncan, the New Democratic Party candidate, answered all the questions intelligently, but that was all. Though Ms. Duncan has, in our opinion, the most impressive resume of all the candidates, she didn’t have very many memorable quotes of the evening and didn’t overly impress us (though we still may vote for her on the 23rd).
Mike Fedeyko, the Progressive Canadian candidate, was a pretty good speaker. He also made sense. Other than the Progressive Canadian Party being the Progressive Canadian Party, he made them sound pretty good. Not having actually read their official policy positions on their website, Mr. Fedeyko made their policies sound fairly moderate, centrist, and filled with common sense.
Green candidate, Cameron Wakefeild, also did a fairly good job.
Kevan Hunter, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) candidate (who is rumoured to be the son of Edmonton Centre Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) candidte Peggy Morton), was most definitely the most entertaining candidate at this forum – best quotes of the forum as well! He also continued on the theme of Canada‘s illegal occupation of Haiti…
Here are some of the better Kevan Hunter quotes…
“If we really want to do our part in helping the real world, we need to stop recking it.”
“You have a choice between negative ad’s… and fascism.”
“I think fascism in this country is a serious concern”
As well, some dumbass in the audience asked Andy Hladyshevsky a question comparing the Liberal attack ad’s to Hitler’s tactics in Nazi Germany… Andy had a kick ass response… here is part of it…
“I’ll give you a comment to that, that person may be flat ass wrong. No one is going to trivialize the Holocaust in this auditorium, not in Myer Horowitz’s auditorium!”
