Just got back from the All Candidates meeting for Esquimalt. We were there for about 45 minutes or so, but it was definitely enough. There were three candidates
Each candidate definitely had their own style. Maurine’s opening speech was all about how the Campbell Liberals had screwed everything up, and the NDP would fix it. She basically attacked the Liberal party.
Jane went off on how the economic model was wrong for BC.
Tom introduced us to his latest work in the public office, and some of the problems he has solved, or is currently working on. Immediately you could see the difference here.
We only stayed for a small portion of the questions, but the NDP position is that the Liberals have a huge deficit, yet the NDP will fix the whole province, and not raise or drop taxes. In most of Maurine’s answers I just wondered where the hell she planned on getting the money from.
Jane usually answered her questions about how the economic model was wrong, and they would look at it, and change it so that it was better. Again, I wondered where they would get the money to change all these models.
Tom’s answers never attacked another party, and generally made sense. In my opinion he was the most well spoken of the three.
With 7 days to vote, Sue and I wanted to learn a bit on the issues, but we could only stand the rhetoric so long. No matter what the question was, the candidates still had problems answering the asked question.
It took less than an hour of our time, but it was still time well spent.