St James Town Community Co-op and CREW hosted a candidates forum on Community Resilience and Emergency Planning for ward 13 city council candidates on Oct 17th, 2018 at the Church of St. Peter and St. Simon in St. James Town. We invited all the candidates who were running for councillor to the forum and we had five questions prepared in advance for the candidates to answer.

At the forum, the candidates who showed up were: Jon Callegher, Megann Willson, Rob Wolvin, Walied Khogali Ali, Gladys Larbie, Tim Gordanier, George Smitherman, Richard Forget, and Jordan Stone while Lucy Triosi sent her apologies. We kicked off the evening with snacks and an intro statement from each candidate before we moved onto the questions. There were moments of tension and candidates also expressed frustration that the incumbent candidates were not present at the forum. At the same time, we had insightful conversations and thoughts from candidates on what community resilience looks like to them and how to best prepare for emergency situations in St. James Town.

We had some time at the end of the evening for questions from the audience and the questions that came up included:

1. How would you ensure that you are accessible to all residents regardless of status?
2. How will you raise revenue for the projects you want to create?
3. People are dying from overdoses in the community, what will you do to address this issue?
4. Do you have a plan of action to get to know your community?

We’re thankful that the candidates had a chance to join us on this evening to share their ideas and how they want to engage these important topics. We’re also glad that people in the community want to engage in these discussion and demand that our candidates work for them and represent them well.

You can find photos of the event here.

You can find a live tweet thread of the debate here covered by Justin Chatwin