About a crowd of about 100 people took in what Huron-Bruce candidates had to say about their parties' platforms and the upcoming election.
The evening was hosted by the Chamber of Commerce for Goderich and North and Central Huron in Goderich.
Six of the eight candidates were in attendance to talk about the issues.
The discussion touched on a number of issues, highlighted by homes and health care.
Progressive Conservative candidate and incumbent for Huron-Bruce, Lisa Thompson, agreed that affordable housing is one of the biggest issues in the riding and that the shortage of affordable housing is a major obstacle to attracting people to move into the area. And that leaves holes in the job market.
Ontario Party candidate Gerrie Huenemoerder says housing is the base of everything right now.
“We need to allow multi units to be built. We need to use un-used land that could be built on, whether it's in municipalities or unfarmable, maybe it's rocky and can't be used for farming,” said Huenemoerder.
Liberal candidate Shelley Blackmore says the lack of affordable housing affects other issues.
“Because it affects everything, it affects labour shortages, it affects young people who want to come here and have a job, but they can't find a place to live. So I think our multi-pronged approach is the way to go. We're looking at rent controls but we're also looking at building and then getting rid of speculators,” said Blackmore.
The NDP candidate for Huron-Bruce, Laurie Hazzard, says while housing is important, health care still tops the list.
"If you don't have healthy, supported people, they you can't run your businesses, you can't live a healthy life, you can't do your job. Health care is at the root of everything. Followed very closely by affordable housing,” explained Hazzard.
The candidate for the New Blue Party touched on wind turbines.
“When you look at the details of the economics of it, we are actually hurting more by having those up than by tearing up the contracts. We would actually save money by cancelling those contracts compared to the amount of the taxpayers subsidy that we're paying right now for every watt of energy generated by those wind mills,” Matt Kennedy stated.
And Green Party candidate, Matthew Van Ankum, stated he was very strongly opposed to the deep geological repository being considered for his riding.
Ontario Alliance candidate Bruce Eisen and Independent candidate Ron Stephens were not able to attend the event.
The election is June 2nd.