The Civic Centre lived up to its name last Thursday.

About 70 people attended an all candidates forum, hosted by the Merritt and District Chamber of Commerce, and administrated by Community Futures Nicola Valley manager Rob Miller.

The mood was generally friendly between candidates and the audience.

It was also civil between the candidates themselves. Liberal candidate Karley Scott remarked near the beginning that the four of them had spent so much time together on the campaign trail that they joked they were able to give each other’s introductions and opening statements.

Though the candidates may have been familiar around each other, they all stressed the importance of voting for their party on Oct. 19.

Questions, curated by Miller, included the role of the federal government in regulating gas prices, their party’s position on seniors housing and enhancing seniors benefits, attack ads, commitment to funding scientific research, what to do about student debt defaults, and support for troops as well as Canada’s role on the world stage. Candidates were given two minutes to respond to each.

Judging from the audience reaction, the room was a generally even split, with particular attention — both positive and negative — given to Conservative incumbent Dan Albas and NDP challenger Angelique Wood, though some issues and points were met with differing levels of response.

Scott has been rising in recent aggregate local polling data, now nearly tied with Wood — Albas’s closest challenger.

Now the Liberal and NDP candidates are each hovering around 25 per cent, against Albas’s 40 per cent, according to analyst Eric Garner’s Threehundredeight.com.

But that didn’t stop Albas from focusing primarily on criticizing the NDP, which has been representing the Conservative’s toughest challenger nationally during this campaign.

One of the more heated questions regarded biosolids, and the role of the federal government in regulating the industry.

Wood said it was on her radar, and wanted to restore regulation. “We should not be making a watershed vulnerable to the potential medical waste in human biosolids,” she said.

Mellalieu emphasized that a solution to this problem would be in bringing many of the parties together to work through this, something that Green Party leader Elizabeth May is good at. Mellalieu praised May as an effective leader several times during the forum.

Scott said she was impressed with how much this issue means to people here in the Valley. She agreed with the other challengers that more collaboration needs to happen, and that First Nations title and rights issues were under the federal government’s purview.

Albas said the anti-biosolids movement was misguided in bringing this to the federal level, and pointed to the agreement signed by the province and the five local band chiefs, announced that day. The statement was met with some boos from the audience.

“The Ministry of Environment and Interior Health has strict criteria, however there is no public consultation, and that’s something we need to work on,” he said.

One question that candidates differed on was legalization of marijuana. While all of the challengers said they were in favour of the move, Albas said it would be a mistake.

The forum rounded off with an option to answer one of three questions: what would your party do to plug health care gaps in Merritt, how to ensure the prosperity of the forestry sector in Merritt, and how would your party encourage food security in the Nicola Valley?

Albas answered all three, pointing to the community garden in Merritt funded by a federal grant. On the forestry topic, he said that while the upcoming timber supply review is a provincial matter, the federal government is focused on the softwood lumber agreement with the U.S., which is coming due soon.

He also touched on healthcare, pointing to a 2013 federal government program that included student loan forgiveness for health care professionals who relocate to rural areas.

Scott focused on health care, where she said premiers need to be meeting with the prime minister on a regular basis — something that hasn’t happened since 2009. She said the Liberals will invest $3 billion over the next three years on home care to take the stress off of hospitals and clinics. She also said the rising cost of pharmaceuticals is prohibitive.

Mellalieu said the government should be promoting healthy lifestyles, but that all of health care, from birth to death and everything in between, should be covered by government.

Wood pitched a universal pharmaceutical program to make medication more affordable. She said the NDP was committed to building 200 new clinics across Canada, and focus on health care recruitment and retention.

Wood also touched on food security, touting a return to small scale human intensive agriculture to prevent climate change. “We need to go back to the kind of agriculture that worked for the last 10,000 years,” she said.

The forum ran for approximately two hours.