Almost-All-Candidates Meeting
So today I went to see the all-candidates debate at the Laurier Faculty of Social Work. They invited all the candidates from both the Kitchener-Waterloo and Kitchener Centre ridings to attend. Candidates from every major party showed up, except, notably, the Conservatives. Both of them ditched us.
Hm. I wonder what that says.
I'm going to the debate at UW on Thursday. I'll be interested to see if Peter Braid bothers to make it to that one.
With the political spectrum spanning the centre to the left, the debate was refreshingly (perhaps even boringly) cordial. I didn't take notes or anything, and I'll probably save my overall impressions till after Thursday's debate.
Some notes:
- Andrew Telegdi mentioned Paul Martin favourably a number of times, and associated himself with Elizabeth May twice. I don't remember him mentioning Stéphane Dion once. I find this... odd. He did point out that his party was very forgiving, however. So maybe they don't mind.
- Cathy MacLelland (who I actually really like) seemed a little bit miffed that Telegdi was trying to abscond with her party leader.
- Telegdi came out advocating preferential voting when the topic came around to electoral reform, like Stéphane Dion did on cross-country check-up yesterday. The NDP guy from Kitchener Centre countered with mixed-member proportional, possibly because he's forgotten about the Ontario referendum last year. Still, I like where this is going.