It was deja vu all over again.
All six candidates from the two Prince George-area electoral districts debated the issues during an all-candidates forum on Tuesday night at UNBC.
For anyone who went to the same event four years ago in the same venue, little had changed.
The first hour-long debate for Prince George Valemount was between Liberal incumbent Shirley Bond and herself.
Although there were two other candidates there - the NDP's Natalie Fletcher and Nan Kendy of the Greens - Bond's experience, knowledge and public speaking skills easily eclipsed her competitors, just like it did in 2013. Sharper candidates would have jumped all over her cheerful claim about strong investor interest in run-of-river and geothermal energy projects in the Robson Valley.
The development of Site C, however, has put the kibosh on that work, as Business In Vancouver (hardly an unfriendly publication to the free-enterprise B.C. Liberals) reported in a story that appeared in Wednesday's Citizen.
Saddled with a cold, Fletcher seemed in a fog most of the night.
While she got in some good points about how the B.C. Liberals went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to fight teachers in a losing case decided in 20 minutes, she was simply parroting the party line.
Bond didn't respond, nor did she take the freebie from Fletcher, who tried to blame the Liberals for school closures in the area.
Bond, a former school board trustee, could have crushed Fletcher with the facts.
School closures in this area over the last 20 years have been due to 6,000 fewer school-age children in the district, not because of provincial cutbacks.
Meanwhile, Kendy relied on her notes far too much, reading long passages of them, even when they were off-topic. Her best moment was when she stopped reading and started listening.
Bond asked the two other candidates whether they were prepared to shut down the Site C dam and issue 2,100 pink slips to the construction workers building it. Fletcher was flustered but Kendy was ready, firing back that if those layoffs saved $7 billion of taxpayers money, it was worth it.
The dull P.G. Valemount debate was the warmup for the P.G. Mackenzie main event, a spirited discussion between Liberal incumbent Mike Morris, the NDP's Bobby Deepak and Hilary Crowley representing the Greens.
Both Crowley and Deepak have previously run for their respective parties (for Crowley, this is the sixth time if both federal and provincial elections are counted), they know their stuff and they know how to carry themselves in political debates.
The P.G.-Mackenzie debate four years ago still gives local Liberals nightmares because of how Deepak pushed around Morris for most of the hour.
They claim to this day that there was yelling and other disruptive behaviour, but that's not on the tape. Just like Linda didn't say to Clark that she had never voted Liberal and would never vote Liberal.
Both Morris and Deepak talked over each other a lot that night and their supporters in the crowd were cheering and jeering them on.
There was less talking over one another this time around, partly due to UNBC political science professor Gary Wilson, who moderated the evening, and partly due to Crowley, who cut in with a sharp "excuse me, Bobby!" and an "excuse me, Mike!" when they wouldn't let her finish.
Wilson had to step in to shut down a man in the audience, who somehow felt Morris needed protecting from Deepak's badgering.
As in the 2013 election forum, the calmest Liberal in the room was the man under the bright lights.
Morris, a retired police officer, simply refused to be interrogated by Deepak, a lawyer trained to be quick with both words and facts. Deepak landed many blows, including a potential kneebuckler after Morris bragged about the close relationship the B.C. Liberals have with the province's First Nations.
Why then, Deepak retorted, did the Union of B.C. Chiefs earlier Tuesday encourage all voters to cast a ballot for ABC (Anybody But Clark)?
And why, he went on, had the Liberals not done more to protect children dying while in the care of the province, since a significant portion of the kids taken from their families are of aboriginal descent?
Crowley piled on, pointing out that the West Moberly First Nations were opposed to Site C and their rights were being bulldozed.
Morris didn't panic, casually pointing out the support of the Simpcw First Nation to the Valemount Glacier development.
At the end of the night, the one thing most clear was that in Prince George-Mackenzie, there were three excellent candidates to pick from, while the decision for Prince George-Valemount residents amounts to voting either for Bond or against her.
But make up your own mind.
CKPG will broadcast the P.G.-Valemount debate at 2 and 6 p.m. on Saturday, then the P.G.-Mackenzie forum at 2 and 6 p.m. on Sunday.
The choice, as always, is yours at the ballot box.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
