By Morgan Ian Adams
Updated 2 hours ago
COLLINGWOOD — Her absence did not make this crowd grow fonder.
With only a few days remaining in the federal election campaign, and only a couple of events left listed in the calendar for Simcoe-Grey candidates to go toe-to-toe, Conservative candidate Kellie Leitch skipped out on an all-candidates event hosted by the Blue Mountains Chamber of Commerce Tuesday night.
According to organizers, Leitch — at a Conservative campaign event in Midhurst featuring Senator Pamela Wallin, with whom she did a couple of campaign stops in the riding — withdrew from the event earlier in the day.
Leitch told the E-B this morning that she had made commitments to make campaign stops in Elmvale and Stayner prior to the date being set for the Thornbury event, as well as the campaign event in Midhurst in the evening.
“It’s unfortunate that the dates conflicted… but I was meeting people in the riding,” she said. “It’s unfortunate and I would have liked to have been there, but when I make a commitment, I keep it.”
However, with six of the seven candidates in the race on stage at the Beaver Valley Community Centre, her absence was noted by both her opponents and some of the 270 people in the audience.
“I was hoping to ask this of the Conservative candidate who didn’t show up tonight,” stated one woman as a preamble to a question on maternal health policies and making generic drugs available to Third World countries.
“It’s unfortunate the official Conservative candidate could not be here,” noted another questioner, as she lined up a query to incumbent Helena Guergis that as an Independent Conservative MP, she could “continue to be a strong advocate for ethics and accountability within the Conservative movement.”
Guergis took that as her moment to pounce on Leitch’s absence from the stage.
“The fact that she’s not here is indicative of the representation you will clearly receive,” said Guergis to loud applause.
She added she’s running for re-election “because I believe it is in the best interests of the party.”
Canadian Action Party candidate Gord Cochrane also took advantage, noting Leitch’s “absence is telling of the dishonesty and lack of transparency of the government of Stephen Harper.”
Leitch likely would have received a rough ride, regardless; audience members were greeted at the door by an Elvis tribute artist brandishing a sign: Return Leitch to Toronto.
“I want somebody (as Member of Parliament) whose going to be local,” said Bill Gallant, the aforementioned tribute artist who’s also put in a number of appearances at the Collingwood Elvis Festival.
An associate of Gallant’s handed out a two-sided flyer featuring background information on the Conservative candidate on one side — including that Leitch refers to Fort McMurray, Alberta, as her hometown — and comments, both positive and negative, about Leitch culled from the doctor rating website, ratemds.com. However, the Angus man said his campaign against Leitch was completely non-partisan.
“I haven’t made my decision (on who to vote for) yet,” he said.
Other questions posed to the candidates during the two-hour meeting tackled gas prices and a cap on gas taxes, health care, and electoral reform.
On funding for the CBC, Christian Heritage candidate Peter Vander Zaag was the lone voice to force the state-owned broadcaster to compete like any other media business — an answer that drew a chorus of boos from the audience.
Meanwhile, Guergis proclaimed her support for the CBC, noting while the CBC is often accused of having a Liberal bias, “I’ve identified a bias in a lot of different media.”
On electoral reform, Green candidate Jace Metheral stated the first thing he would do as MP is “stand up in the House of Commons and ask for an electoral commission.” Later in the meeting, Metheral took aim at Harper, saying it was “ignorant to call for a majority government when that is not representative of the people of Canada.”
Another woman, on a question of foreign ownership of Canadian resources such as oil, also queried the candidates on the relationship of the Liberal and Conservative parties to the Bilderburg Group, an annual invite-only conference of influential individuals in the fields of politics, banking, business, and the military.
Because of its secrecy, it’s often accused by conspiracy theorists of being a secret society bent on enforcing world order.
Most of the candidates steered clear of the Bilderburg part of the question, though Cochrane emphasized that Liberal and Conservative members “regularly visit” the conference.
– iadams@theenterprisebulletin; twitter.com/Scoop_68
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