The Mayoralty Debate Take Two! Kind of, sort of and definitely missing a few contributors...

For a few days now local residents have been taking advantage of a streaming video replay (see here) of the City Council Election Forum.

The video review provided by CityWest Cable 10, providing voters in Saturday's election, one more chance to review the comments of the nine candidates for the six Council seats up for election as part of the 2014 Municipal campaign.

Since that Council Forum review was first put up four days ago on the CityWest Chanel 10 You Tube page, there has been some anticipation from would be voters, as to when the Mayoralty Forum video would be provided.

On Thursday, word of that portion of last Tuesday night's event was finally delivered to the CityWest YouTube portal, though it definitely isn't what most viewers in the city probably will be expecting, or for that matter should be expecting.

The new video presentation opens with Mayoralty Challenger Sheila Gordon-Payne standing outside the Lester Centre, outlining that CityWest had suffered some technical issues as they worked towards delivering last weeks Forum production from the venue.

The result of those apparent technical struggles, leaves us with something a little less complete than the wide ranging forum of last Tuesday.

In fact, the most recent production to be put up for consideration, also leaves us short two candidates.

While Ms. Gordon-Payne gets to "introduce" the feature and Mayor Jack Mussallem provides what appears to be the "conclusion", the exclusion without any explanation, of Mayoralty contenders Tony Briglio and Lee Brain seems just plain bizarre and something that is clearly a little puzzling.

If both of the two other challengers had been offered a chance and declined that opportunity, that should have been mentioned and with an explanation as to why, if for no other reason than one of clarity.

Rather than a video record of  the Mayoralty Forum, we receive what amounts to free time political advertising for two of the four candidates, providing them with the opportunity to present their political talking points one more time.

Something we imagine that must be making for some interesting conversations among the supporters of the two candidates who are missing from the video presentation of Thursday.

Both of whom we imagine, might at some point want to provide their thoughts on the plan of approach taken by CityWest's Channel 10 when it comes to information programming and their lack of contribution to it, particularly with but one day left in the Municipal Mayoralty race.

The concept of offering up the two political messages from the Mayoralty candidates and then shifting to the Council Forum presentation also makes absolutely no sense.

Especially when you consider that the Council Forum Video was already up and running and in fact had already been taken in by over 125 viewers.

Whatever the original thinking was, tacking on the eleven minute preamble from only two Mayoralty candidates to another viewing of the Council Forum is going to make for a pretty interesting side story for the final day of the campaign.

Whatever the reason, the approach taken to address CityWest's "technical issues" of last week's forum seems wrong and poorly handled.

You can review the "opening acts" for the Council debate below.

However, those that do sit down for the new material may at some point wonder why the feature is there as it is currently presented, something that would be a very valid observation.



For those heading to the polls on Saturday, it's unfortunate that for whatever technical  reasons, the Mayoralty Forum won't be provided for further review.

Last Tuesday night provided some very interesting discussion points for consideration.

As well as offering up a helpful review as to how the candidates handled the questions and back and forth rebuttals of the evening.

You can find our account of last Tuesday's Mayoralty Forum available here. 

For more on the 2014 Municipal election see our  archive  page which features items added throughout the campaign.