Currently all four Mayoral candidates have registered to attend and 36 out of the 40 council candidates will be in attendance. (Jesse Woodward/ CHLY 101.7FM)

Voters will get to hear from candidates running for Nanaimo city council at an upcoming Civic Engagement Forum.

Hosted at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre on Tuesday, Sept. 29, the forum will bring together most of the 40 candidates running to be a councillor and all four candidates running to be mayor.

Julie Sperber, is the incoming CEO of the Greater Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce. She said the night will open with a chance for attendees to meet the candidates.

“So the first hour is going to be a a meet-and-greet, almost trade show style, where all of the candidates that are joining us will have their own six-foot table and will be able to talk with the general public who are coming in to learn more about their platforms and who they are,” Sperber said.

Attendees will then move to the Mt. Benson Ballroom for a seated forum with all of the candidates. The forum will be moderated by local CHEK News reporter, Kendall Hanson.

The forum will start with councillor candidates being given 15 seconds to introduce themselves and say one thing they want Nanaimo voters to know about them before moving off stage for a debate with all four mayoral candidates

The mayoral candidates will be asked three or four questions to be discussed in debate-style conversation.

Councillor candidates will then return to the stage for a rapid-fire question period.

“The first question will be randomized as to which candidates get which question, but each of the candidates will have an opportunity to raise their hand to answer another question of their choice once they hear it,” she said.

Sperber said this will allow candidates to answer questions that they feel are in their purview, expertise, or part of their platform or mandate that they want to bring to their position at the city.

She said the Chamber has put out a form for attendees to fill out with questions they have for candidates. This will help shape the questions asked on Tuesday.

“We're going to try and distill the questions so that they're reflective of the community input that we received,” she said. “But yes, as a Chamber of Commerce, we're going to try and align about 40 per cent of our questions directly to business and economic development.”

She said the rest of the questions will be about health care, infrastructure and public education, which can be just as important to understand how candidates’ ideas could help grow the economy.

“A healthy economy is a healthy community, and there's so many factors that go into it, including transportation, including access to health care,” she said. “They're not separate from the health of our business and economy.”

Sperber said they will send the longlist of questions to candidates 24 hours before the forum but will not tell them exactly which questions will be asked during the event.

Currently all four mayoral candidates have registered to attend and 36 out of the 40 councillor candidates will be in attendance.

She said she hopes this forum will allow residents to have a greater understanding of the candidates and what they seek to bring to the City of Nanaimo.

“I'm hoping that people walk away more informed,” she said. “I hope people are able to find their values aligned with some of the councillors, so they feel really confident in who they're going to be voting for for the next four-year term for the city.”

She said she also hopes the forum will help strengthen conversations about this year’s municipal election and get more people out to vote.

During the last municipal election in 2022, voter turn out rate was 23.9 per cent. That is down from 40 per cent in 2018.

The Greater Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce’s Civic Engagement Forum will be held on Tuesday, Sept.29 at 5 p.m.

Registration has now closed for in-person attendance at the but people can watch the forum live on the chamber’s Youtube channel. The stream will be saved and shared on their social media following the event.

Advance voting in this year’s municipal election will take place on October 7 and 14. General Voting Day is October 17.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

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