So tonight was the "All Youth Mayoral Debate" at Hart House (University of Toronto). The event started an hour late because of the antics of Kevin Clarke. Clarke, a candidate for mayor, seized the stage and demanded to be allowed to participate in the event. In between his unintelligible rants, Clarke poured himself glasses of water while people asked him to leave the stage. Some people cheered but it was pretty clear that Clarke was somewhat unstable. Hart House policy is that an event be cancelled before someone be forcibly removed, so a recess was called where everyone left and eventually Clarke left. If not for the media, he probably would have left a lot earlier...

Organizers initially sought a compromise where all the candidates for mayor in attendance would be allowed to participate, but safety concerns over Clarke's history of behaviour prevented this from happening. Sonic Dave, Shaun Bruce, and Mitch Gold, among other mayoral candidates, were at the event, as well as a group of candidates running for city council.

In terms of the actual debate, I was really disappointed. The debate was not a debate, it was a take turns answering pre-determined questions and then take some from the audience style affair. With the exception of the first question, which was about black youth and addressing the root causes of violence, candidates were asked about particularly middle class issues like tuition (3 times!!!) and student housing. This was obviously a result of the make-up of the crowd.

If there was more time, I would like to organize an afternoon event at the St. Lawrence Forum and invite students from high schools to come down, giving them control over the format and who was invited to participate.

The level of discourse was pretty low and I don't really think anyone could have taken much home from this event. Miller got the most applause and LeDrew was heckled the most. Here are some highlights from my notes:

- Miller said he announced today that he supports landed immigrants being able to vote, but remained silent on lowering the voting age, which Pitfield said she supported at least twice

- Pitfield mentioned her affordable housing plan where people living in public housing making $40,000 or more would be able to buy homes, which was met by silence...She also said she wanted to take money from that is spent on homelessness and use it for rent supplements

- LeDrew made an interesting point about the sole-sourcing TTC cars debacle: if council wanted them to be made in Canada, they should have just included that in their request for proposal, instead of not doing one...

- Miller talked about the so-called U-Pass for university students several times, which is not well-liked because the last time it was proposed it was mandatory for all full-time students at $65 per month...something that could never pass a referendum at UofT

- LeDrew made a good pitch about young people getting involved in politics and voting, probably the best response to the question about involving youth. In his response, Miller twice repeated that there were two youth on his Community Safety Panel, which isn't actually true...it was hard to resist from heckling

- Miller did mention the Toronto Youth Cabinet and said it was doing good work, but he basically used it as a crutch for saying how he was involving young people at city hall...Pitfield also said she thought TYC did good work, but she felt there were too many young adults as opposed to youth (difference?) and wanted to speak to some teenagers...for the record, I fully support the creation of the Toronto Children's Cabinet

I'm really curious how the media will report this event. Will it just be about Kevin Clarke? I saw CityTV tonight and they said how it focused on tuition. I wanted to throw up.