The Dufferin Board of Trade is a grass-roots, non-profit, non-partisan organization with a small staff, a few volunteers and a limited budget. Our passion is to help local business thrive. One of the ways we do this is by being the voice of business in Dufferin and advocating on behalf of business needs. We are not mandated or funded specifically to host election debates for the public, but choose do so to help our community.
This forum will be live televised and live streamed by Rogers for exactly two hours. With 6 candidates running in this election, there will be time for opening/closing remarks and approximately 6-8 questions.
DBOT has been accepting questions from the public via our website, phone, or mail for several weeks. The deadline to submit questions is Sept 26th. So far we have received over 40 questions from the public. A small DBOT committee will review all questions received and compile a list of those to be asked by the moderator, covering as many different topics as possible. Candidates will not be informed of the questions prior to the event. Following the event, the questions submitted from the public but not asked due to time constraints will be forwarded to all candidates. Candidates’ written responses will be posted on our website.
We strongly believe that this modern format, which is done in many other communities, is the most fair and equitable way to allow as many different voter issues to be addressed by the candidates in the given time frame. Combining online and in-person viewing, and the opportunity for all residents to submit questions which the candidates will either respond to at the forum or in writing after, we can enable the candidates’ messages to reach all interested Dufferin voters.
In addition, this format provides a 30 minute meet and greet component at the start of the event where residents can speak directly to candidates and gather campaign information. We have had individual meetings with all six candidates and they have all indicated their support for this format. There are at least two other election debates in the riding this year with various formats. Details on the other debates, the candidate bios, live-streaming information and more can be found at www.dufferinbot.ca/election.