Candidates Debate

Thursday, 5 June 2014 05:12

The five Oxford candidates gathered in Ingersoll Wednesday night to answer questions from the audience.

INGERSOLL -- It was standing room only Wednesday night at the Unifor Hall in Ingersoll, site of yet another all-candidates meeting for Oxford.

The two hour session also provided the best forum yet for open questions from the audience.

Ingersoll Mayor Ted Comiskey was also in attendance and praised the citizens of his town for bringing forth they key issues which hit closest to home for them.

"They talked about the hospital situation, about losing services. They talked about the landfill. They talked about infrastructure, and they talked about the amount of dollars that are being wasted that should be redirected to help communities do what they can do."

The proposed Walker Landfill was indeed a large focus of the evening, but so to was healthcare, bringing questions about Alexandra Hospital's long term future, senior care and the elimination of provincial health LIHN's.

Comiskey says the questions Wednesday follow a path of dollars wasted, instead of being redirected into helping communities make the decisions at the local level.

"A lot of the power and energy has been taken out of municipalities and the county into the province and into the federal, and we don't have control over these very, very important things that effect our daily life -- and that's our hospital and the air we breath, and a landfill and our infrastructure."

During candidates opening statements, Green Party candidate Mike Farlow focused on keeping Alexandra Hospital lab open and stopping the mega dump. Liberal candidate Daniel Mouton said the science making the case for the landfill was wrong.

With the landfill taking centre stage, Ingersoll Mayor Ted Comiskey said the environmental process around the proposed landfill will be long, but shouldn't be, if the province used common sense.

"They all have to go through this new environmental process that they have to do all the testing first, before somebody can open their eyes, give their head a shake and say, 'This was a stupid idea to begin with...' So how much money is wasted over this next few years, before hopefully somebody wakes-up?"

In other discussions Wednesday, Freedom Party Leader Tim Hodges talked about balancing the budget, something he says his party has been able to do three times on their in the past three years.

Progressive Conservative candidate Ernie Hardeman called the provincial budget and the deficit the biggest problem facing the province.

NDP candidate Bryan Smith criticized Tory Leader Tim Hudak's math on job creation and the Liberal gas plant scandal.

Wednesday's all candidates meeting produced easily the highest attendance for a debate so far in the Oxford campaign.

Candidates have little time to regroup with two more debates scheduled this week, and a special all-candidates meeting dealing solely on the Walk Landfill proposal next week in Beachville.