All Candidates Meeting Packed Out!

It Was Standing Room Only

The all candidates forum at Beban Park hosted by the Coalition for a Democratic Nanaimo was standing room only as many hundreds backed the auditorium to hear from candidates in the upcoming civic election.

The format was different in that four different groups of candidates fielded different questions relating to governing the city in areas such as planning, fiscal responsibility and growing the economy. Questions were posed and candidates could present their views on each subject with the only restriction being that each segment was limited to 20 minutes.

The forum was moderated by CBC Radio personality Mark Forsythe who kept candidates on topic and on the clock.

Hats off to the group who took this initiative to put together this non partisan meeting whose only purpose is to enable genuine dialogue between candidates and citizens. Clearly this could be the start of a very useful format for future town hall meetings where council makes themselves more accessible to the public which could go a long way in involving more people in the democratic process. Something which we are definitely lacking.

On the one hand you can complain that council and city hall is not transparent enough, and their love for the secrecy of 'in camera' decisions does nothing to involve the public. On the other hand you can fault the public for poor attendance when the city conducts open house meetings and few citizens take the time to show up. It has become a vicious cycle which hopefully will come to an end, and this meeting could be the genesis of just such an improvement.