Close to 200 people packed a hot Stittsville United Church sanctuary on Monday night, and peppered Carleton candidates with a wide range of questions from terrorism to income splitting.
The debate was organized by the Stittsville Village Association and included Deborah Coyne (Green), Kc Larocque (NDP), Pierre Poilievre (Conservative) and Chris Rodgers (Liberal).
The two-hour question-and-answer session was tightly moderated by Louise Beggs, a former Goulbourn city councillor, and included questions from around 20 residents, chosen at random from the crowd. It was standing room only at the church. Even the choir loft was full of spectators.
StittsvilleCentral.ca reporter and Algonquin journalism student Alex Quesnel attended the event and provided live coverage via @stittslive. You can read a summary below.
Read more Carleton election articles here…
Judging from the picture, I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of the people in the audience are baby boomers, and that all but one party is completely wasting their time here.
What is being done to get young people to vote, and why can’t we see these debates happening on more younger territories such as schools?
Excellent point!
Hi Joe. I was at the debate last night and agree that it was an older demographic, but I don’t think that’s evidence that young people aren’t engaged.
Have you been on Facebook lately? Twitter? There are election posts all over the place. Young people might not attend a ‘live’ debate but they are interested and do engage in different ways.
Sacred Heart High School has invited all the candidates to speak to students on October 7, and the students are doing a ‘mock vote’ on October 16.
There was strong support at the debate last night for all the candidates. (Although a large number of people in the audience were volunteers for the candidates.)
Making students perform a mock vote, does not mean that young people are engaged. My point was that why can’t an official debate not be held in front of a young crowd, so that they can feel and experience politics in action?
Students could be asked to summarize each participant’s position and arguments. Perhaps students could be taught to approach it in balanced way, where they’d weigh off, and respect other opposing views. Something unlike media corporations are constantly brainwashing us all with…
And lastly, what about Richmond high school? Are they doing something as well? Or is only the Catholic high school important? After all, Richmond “public” high school is only just an outdated dilapidated sorry old building way out in the boonies out there…
Things that stood out for me:
PP: “We have the best public servants in the world”
– is that why you’re laying them off and replacing them with higher paid consultants?
PP saying they’re helping veterans at the same time was telling of his party too.
It was good to hear the person in the audience got booed when he suggested global warming isn’t caused by humans. The science is there, whether or not that person believes it.