The second local debate for the federal election took place on Tuesday night.
YourTV hosted the candidates for a television audience. All five of the candidates were on hand, Mark King (PPC), Anthony Rota (Liberal), Jordy Carr (Conservative), Rob Boulet (NDP) and Alexander Gomm (Green Party).
Many questions were fielded by the candidates, some of which resulted in a heated discussion. Of the subjects, one of the big ones was gun control, which was brought up at the last debate hosted by Nipissing University a week ago.
The Liberals have promised to ban assault or military assault rifles, and plan to give municipalities the option to ban handguns altogether. Boulet pointed out that the NDP plan to spend $100 million on preventing youth from joining gangs.
A point from the last debate that King brought up in Tuesday’s debate is Bill C-71 which King said the PPC plans to abolish. Bill C-71 was designed to support public safety, while being respectful and reasonable to gun owners.
The Bill was passed last year and King stated, “That bill actually holds law-abiding gun owners into an uncomfortable situation as far as gun ownership goes.”
On the topic of bringing clean water to all Canadians, Carr accused the Liberals of taking care of a small percentage to which Rota replied that 145 communities did not have clean drinking water in 2015, and that number is now down to 87.
Gomm stated that the Green Party would like to give First Nations training and the resources to solve the problem on their own, while King said that the PPC wanted to re-open the Indian Act and allow individuals the chance to have property rights on reserve.
Boulet added that the situation with drinking water was a national travesty and disgrace.
Another topic of discussion leading up to election night is that of immigration.
King and the People’s Party have stated they would like to decrease the number of immigrants from the target of 350,000 to 150,000 and pointed to the hundreds of people living in hotels in Toronto. He suggested that the country should focus more on the Indigenous population.
“What we’re doing is we’ve decided we’re going to go to Asia or Indonesia to bring people in and we haven’t looked after our Indigenous people,” King explained.
“With the death rate in North Bay surpassing the birth rate we cannot continue the way we’re going without immigration,” Carr said.
“There are many, many contributions that are made every day by immigrants in our country and we need to do whatever we can to assist them in the transition,” Gomm stated while getting heated with King and talking about his own experiences living in Asia and having parents who have immigrated.
Rota stated that immigrants add to the economy and make Canada a better country while touching on a pilot project which he spearheaded in partnership with the North Bay Chamber of Commerce to match employers with skilled immigrants and helping to give them a path to permanent residency.
Boulet credited the Liberals for the project and said that the NDP party would like to make it a permanent program.
The federal election takes place on October 21.
