(Photo Supplied: Fort McMurray-Athabasca MP David Yurdiga. June 16, 2014).
Incumbant MP David Yurdiga’s streak of skipping out on debates continued this week as he was absent at yet another all-candidates debate.
This one was in Cold Lake on Wednesday, October 7.
The next debate being held in the riding will take place on Wednesday, October 14 at the 1st United Church and Yurdiga is the only candidate running in the riding who has yet to confirm his attendance.
Liberal candidate Kyle Harrietha, NDP candidate Melody Lepine, Green Candidate Brian Deheer, Christian Heritage Party candidate Roelof Janssen, and Libertarian candidate Scott Berry will all attend the October 14 debate.
There had been reports following earlier debates that a family emergency had prevented Yurdiga from attending but repeated calls to his campaign team from MyMcMurray went unanswered, and those reports were unconfirmed.
“We did decline to attend the debate put on by Comp and Westwood due to a scheduling conflict. Then when Kathy, David’s wife fell ill, David missed the debates in Lac La Biche and Fort McMurray. After that our campaign team made a decision to refocus on meeting constituents,” said Kim Farwell in an e-mailed statement from the campaign team.
A member of the team had said earlier the campaign had not planned to attend debates during the federal election campaign term. The candidate never confirmed attendance with any debate organizers, according to the organizers.
Liberal Candidate Kyle Harrietha said he found the apparent lack of honesty from the Conservative candidate “disgraceful,” saying it is enough to have misled organizers about the reason for missing the debates but, “to use a family illness as that excuse when, in fact, it was for another reason is absolutely beyond the pale.”
“Mr. Yurdiga led the Cold Lake organizers to believe that he was missing the debate because of his wife’s illness. Then his campaign put out a statement today saying they had cancelled on the Cold Lake debate because they were focusing on door-knocking, which made sense because he was door knocking the night of the debate,” he said.
“Now he’s going to Cold Lake next week rather than attending the community job interview in Fort McMurray and his campaign has now confirmed that in fact they never intended to go to any debates. Mr. Yurdiga yesterday in an interview with Mix 103.7 said that he had his debate binder ready to go and that he would have attended all of the debates if not for the illness in his family. Today I called him out for his pants being on fire because I believed he was lying and today his campaign confirmed that he was in fact lying and that the plan for the campaign was to never attend any debates,” said Harrietha.
Harrietha has criticized Yurdiga for his absence at the debates and forums which the Liberal candidate said he considers to be interviews with the constituents for the job as Member of Parliament.
