Five of the six candidates running for mayor were put on the hot seat during Saturday afternoon’s all-candidates forum held at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC).
UNBC’s Canfor Theatre was full of people eager to hear from both mayoral and council candidates at the forum hosted by the Prince George Citizen, UNBC, CKPG, and the Prince George Public Library.
While candidate Lisa Mitchell was not in attendance at the forum, Adam Hyatt, Terri McConnachie, Roy Stewart, Chris Wood and Simon Yu were not only asked to weigh in on a variety of topics including social issues downtown but were also asked pointed questions about their campaigns.
Hyatt, who is running on a campaign to ‘Cut the Fat’ at City Hall, was asked how he plans on doing that when the mayor only has one vote at the city council table.
“It’s very important who you vote for council,” answered Hyatt.
“If you want to vote for big change than you have to vote for council that is going to support that change or whatever that platform is,” said Hyatt adding that if he is elected mayor “city council better take note.”
He said as the mayor you “have to be a bit of a salesman and try and convince people to vote along with you” and that he is also willing to compromise.
Incumbent Coun. Terri McConnachie, now running for the city’s top job, had a seat at the table for eight years when the city experienced major cost overruns and problems downtown.
McConnachie was asked to explain why voters should trust her as mayor.
“In addition to the unprecedented investment of private dollars to the city that we have captured, we have had some unprecedented issues and overruns to some projects, and I sat at the table when that happened,” confirmed McConnachie.
“I will speak for myself, I was not supplied the information that I needed to make the sound decisions on your behalf. The big change that was necessary began right then right that day.”
She said changes were made at the staffing level, and changes were made for policies, procedures, better transparency, and reporting.
“So, all those things that were necessary have made us a stronger council moving forward. But the work is not done. Moving forward, if I am chosen as your mayor another level of accountability that is essential is to take the finance and audit committee to a committee of the whole level.”
She said having a mayor and all eight councilors with eyes on the city’s financials would increase transparency and accountability.
Roy Stewart, who is a lawyer and currently has a client with a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the City of Prince George, was asked to explain how he would resolve this conflict of interest should he be elected mayor.
“It is a conflict of interest if I am elected mayor no question,” answered Stewart. “I assured my client I will give him the name of the best lawyer in the province of British Columbia to carry on the lawsuit if I am elected. That is how I would resolve it. It is any easy thing to do, and it is an ethical thing to do.”
He said his client is perfectly aware of the situation and supports him.
“In fact, his whole company supports me, so that makes it easier for me but that is the only conflict of interest I have and the only lawsuit against the city that I am presently involved in.”
He also added that he has been involved in many lawsuits against the city in the past, but “those days are over.”
Chris Wood stated in his announcements to run for mayor that he’d like to support businesses that want to move out of the downtown. He was asked to justify why he thinks the city should be using tax dollars to help private businesses relocate.
“The plan is to be able to decentralize downtown and that is to let smaller businesses relocate out of downtown if they are going out of business because of downtown social issues,” stated Wood.
“To facilitate that, I am proposing a $40,000 loan to allow the businesses of this town to leave downtown. A portion of that will be forgiven if they leave downtown, if they chose not to, the $40,000 loan would still be available to every other business in town.”
He argued that this money could come from the $20,000 loan forgiveness of the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) which was a fund set up for COVID-19 relief.
However, the federal government is in charge of CEBA loans and it is not in the jurisdiction of local governments to administer on behalf of private businesses.
Engineer Simon Yu, who is originally from Hong Kong, has stated publicly at other forums this week, that he attended residential school. He did attend Prince George College from 1975 to 1977 which later became O’Grady Catholic High School.
Prince George College Students were not eligible for a settlement from the Indian Residential School Settlement agreement and Yu was asked to clarify his comments.
“When I was attending Prince George College back in 1975 in general term it was referred to as residential school at the time – because 1975 was a transition time,” said Yu.
He said the notion of boarding schools was reserved for rich kids and that was not the situation at Prince George College.
“I lived among First Nations and myself and only two other boys were non-Indigenous students, and all of the others were, so in my mind, I attended residential school. That is how I view it,” said Yu.
“I have no attention to try and mislead anybody as if I did go to residential school. I learned my first English sentence from First Nations people […] For me, these people are my brothers and sisters and are very, very dear to me.”
The Prince George Public Library will be hosting the full video of the nearly two-hour forum on its website later this week.
Profiles of all the candidates, as well as video-featurettes, are also available through the Prince George Citizen’s election page.
Voters hit the polls for general voting day on Oct. 15 but advanced voting starts as early as Oct. 5. You can also find out where, when, and how to vote on the Citizen’s election hub.
