With election season on the horizon for the southeast with both municipal and provincial outings, people are looking to be informed about their choices more than ever.
That's why this fall the Estevan Chamber of Commerce is holding two different forums, one for the provincial candidates and one for the municipal candidates, here in Estevan.
The first forum will be for the provincial candidates on October 23 at 7 p.m., with the municipal forum happening on November 6 at 7 p.m. Both of the forums will be held at the Estevan Legion.
Vice President Tania Andrist talks about what the forums will be bringing to the southeast community.
"In the upcoming weeks, our community is going to be going to the polls and regularly during election time, the Chamber will hold nonpartisan events and all candidates forums for community members to learn a little bit more about what the candidate's positions are on stances or on subjects pertaining to the community whether it's a provincial election or whether it's a civic election, and this year, of course, we have two happening at pretty much the same time."
The forum is also being streamed online for people who don't make it to the Legion.
For those who do tune in or attend the forums, they'll be able to hear candidate's opinions on some of the biggest topics.
"We are actually asking the Chamber members or members of the Community to e-mail us if they have questions they'd like us to bring up. Normally during these forums and again, it happens at election time, the candidates will have an opportunity to share their stance. What they hope to bring where, if elected, and then we'll have a question and answer period depending on the number of candidates, depending on the time. It starts at 7 and usually goes a couple of hours."
The chamber will also have a new Executive Director for the forums which Andrist says will be great for the event.
"We're right in transition for our new executive director. So Marissa Scarlett will be starting right away and we we expect that she'll be quite involved in these and certainly as we get further into her tenure as our new executive director, she'll be playing a larger role in these political forms. But right now, we're in transition."
"You've got representation from our board rather than our new executive director, but we're really looking forward to Merissa starting and she's got a real keen interest in politics. So, she's going to be a terrific representative for us in this forum."
Andrist is excited for the forums and all the info they'll help get out to the public.
"We're really looking forward to being able to provide the community with a forum for the candidates to share their platforms and to get to know them a little bit better," said Andrist. "Candidates will appear and have an opportunity to share their platform, and then there'll be some questions from a moderator."
"We've been doing these at every election. In fact, we had to do one during COVID where there were no people allowed to be in the audience. That was back in 2020. So this is going to be a more public engagement opportunity, but it will also be on access so that people can watch from the comfort of their homes."
Andrist says that people can go to the estevanchamber.ca website or their FaceBook page for more info, and can send in any questions they'd like answered to executivedirector@estevanchamber.ca.