All four mayoral candidates in Lethbridge — Quentin Carlson, Blaine Hyggen, Ryan Mennie and Michael Petrakis — met for a debate and public forum on Tuesday.
Hosted by the Lethbridge Public Library, the forum offered voters a chance to ask questions and listen to candidate platforms.
For Carlson, a first-time candidate, it was a good experience.
“The forum is an excellent place for people to ask those bigger questions in front of a bigger audience and see how everyone is responding to being put on the spot,” Carlson said.
The same optimism was also felt by Petrakis.
“I appreciated the questions that people presented and the talk,” said Petrakis. “The conversations that I feel were important to mention and discuss, a lot of them were discussed. Yeah, I’m really happy with how things went.”
Both candidates took different approaches to the evening, with Petrakis speaking frequently and Carlson staying more reserved.
“I wanted to give opportunities for new questions. Essentially, I didn’t want to take up too much time,” said Carlson.
Even so, he arguably got the largest cheer from the crowd after declaring his wholehearted support for Alberta remaining a part of Canada.
However, the crowd wasn’t united on everything. Residents took to the microphone to express concerns with, primarily, Hyggen and Mennie, the perceived front-runners in the election.
From Mennie’s tax policy history during his time as a councillor in Campbell River to Hyggen’s availability with residents, people queued throughout the entire event to have their voices heard.
Two comments seemed to steal the show, however.
A voter, Layne Whipple, told Mennie he received an email from his campaign indicating it said he had signed up to get the email. Whipple says that’s not the case.
“I never signed up for emails with anybody’s campaign that is running in this election this year,” said Whipple.
The email in question has a footnote saying, “You’re receiving this email because you’ve signed up to receive the occasional email update from our campaign. I promise not to spam you, but you can always click here to unsubscribe if you no longer wish to keep in touch.”
Whipple says he has no concern with the rest of the email, but that footnote does bother him.
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“I would also like to know where he got my email address from.”
Mennie says he’s not exactly sure where the emails are sourced.
“I have a team that is collecting email addresses for people throughout our region. Their methods, they share with me that we’re putting out a blast. Where they get those individually, I can’t say,” said Mennie.
He promises there was nothing malicious going on, however.
“I’ve actually been shocked by the response of people who don’t want to be communicated with.”
As a result, he says he’s made changes to his email strategy moving forward after a discussion with the city.
That email issue was not the only one causing controversy.
On Wednesday morning, officials with the Lethbridge Lodging Association said they, too, received an unwanted email — although their claim was more serious.
“The Lethbridge Lodging Association (LLA) is responding to false and misleading statements made by Mayoral Candidate Ryan Mennie in an unsolicited email distributed to local businesses,” the organization said.
They pointed Global News to an email distributed to local businesses earlier in the week in which Mennie’s campaign raised issue with the recent renaming of the Visitlethbridge.com Arena. Visitlethbridge.com is operated by the LLA.
“City Hall approved $400,000 in Destination Marketing Fees to be used to pay for the naming rights of the Visitlethbridge.com Arena,” said Mennie’s campaign.”Visitlethbridge.com is not owned by Lethbridge, it’s a private interest group representing big hotel chains. I want to address that.”
The LLA says it’s not true.
“These statements are entirely inaccurate and misrepresents both the nature and purpose of the Association, as well as its long-standing contributions and investments made to the City of Lethbridge in order to reduce the taxpayer burden, enhance tourism visibility and help attract major events that fill local hotels, restaurants and venues,” the LLA said.
Global News reached out to Mennie for a response, but he opted to point out Hyggen’s relationship with the LLA instead.
“A member of the public has raised serious concerns about Mayor Hyggen’s conflict of interest with big business partners. These actions by the current administration are why I’m running for Mayor,” Mennie said in an email.
“What I plan to do as Mayor is restore accountability and transparency at City Hall. I will work hard on behalf of every single citizen and all business – big and small – to realize the great potential of Lethbridge.”
That member of the public was Trina Tymko, who spoke with Global News immediately following the forum.
“The person that is the head of Visitlethbridge.com, or Visitlethbridge, is close personal friends with Blaine,” said Tymko.
She says it’s fine to have personal relationships, but if it interferes with politics, something must be done.
“There’s a lot of conflicts there,” Tymko said. “There should be people who recuse themselves when it comes to some voting.”
Hyggen was quick to reject any allegation of wrongdoing, however.
“There’s absolutely zero conflict of interest. If there was, it would have been challenged by my colleagues or somebody would have written in if there was a conflict of interest,” Hyggen said. “I don’t know why it would come out now, years later, literally.”
He says there is no taxpayer money going to the LLA.
“We have an organization that does incredible work in our community and does that work without the cost of taxation,” said Hyggen.
For Tymko, this kind of response isn’t enough from the incumbent candidate.
“It’s understandable that Blaine would be defensive about that as well, because there is a lot of conflict of interest that has been happening at city council for several years,” Tymko said. “This is just one of the incidents.”
However, Hyggen says his resume still stands strong.
“I’ve got to put message out there and make sure I’m doing the best that I can and I can show the track record that I’ve had — not just myself, we as a council, have done over these past four years.”
Election day is on Oct. 20.
