BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a letter from Doug Lewis regarding candidates debates, published May 24.
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As one of the co-ordinators for the Just Recovery Simcoe candidates digital debates held across all Simcoe ridings from May 12 to 18, I’d like to address some of the inaccurate assumptions expressed in the letter written by a former Progressive Conservative candidate.
First, every attempt was made to contact the current PC candidates in all ridings. Three declined our debate citing schedule conflicts and two did not bother to reply.
Evidently, based on this letter, we are now to assume they likely declined because they no longer think a public debate on ‘issues’ is worthy of their time and attention. They’d rather not appear personally to the public at large to talk about things we broached like “the environment, affordability, climate change and social issues” (as quoted on our website).
Interestingly, many Simcoe-area Liberal, Green Party and NDP candidates had no qualms about presenting their policy ideas and positions personally in a public manner within our debate format.
The letter writer also suggests that it is too time consuming to attend a debate, to which I would respond that our digital debates were 1.5 hours in duration with about 15 minutes required beforehand to check sound, etc. This is not a huge time commitment. Plenty of time still for all that door knocking.
Additionally, the letter writer suggests that “special interests” groups requiring investigation are somehow lurking behind the debates, which is just silly.
Our media release was published on this very site (BarrieToday) on May 6 and it is linked on our website. Our email and website were always on our invitations, and, again, we were clear up front that the debate would address issues related to “the environment, affordability, climate change and social issues,” which are relevant issues prominent in news headlines. None of these topics are hidden or fringe.
Additionally, well in advance, our website included the debate questions, the expectations of the debate format, and the logos of who, locally, endorsed these debates, which primarily included people in the Simcoe area belonging to housing, environmental, social and student groups. These are all still on our website.
Being a digital debate and openly recorded, videos are now available for a wide audience, for anyone to view any time from anywhere at https://justrecoverysimcoe.ca.
Assuming a debate has a limited and thus ineffective reach is the wrong assumption here. PC candidates missed an opportunity to present themselves personally to their prospective ridings (and beyond) and to clarify their policy plans on these issues accordingly.
This is a worrisome precedent that seems to be occurring across Ontario, with PC candidates also refusing other debate forums.
People are right to wonder at this refusal why these particular candidates (and former candidates, such as the letter writer) seem so keen to justify their sudden departure from a longstanding democratic tradition.
Julie Johnson
Oro-Medonte Township
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