The four candidates that are running for the United Conservative Party's nomination in the new riding of Airdrie-Cochrane will get another chance to try to wow party voters at a forum in the city tonight (October 4).

This is the second forum this week in the riding.   The first was held during Tuesday night's snowstorm and it was held in Cochrane, a town that was blanketed by snow.

Russell Kossowan, Constituency President in the Airdrie-Cochrane riding for the UCP says despite the heavy dump of snow, he was pleasantly surprised by the turnout.

"It was far better attended than we anticipated.  As you know, we probably got 15 inches of snow in Cochrane (Tuesday) and we were concerned that we wouldn't get a large turnout but I had one gentleman did a count and he said we had about 145 people there."

Kossowan says that doesn't come as much of a surprise, despite the weather.  The Airdrie-Cochrane riding has around 3,400 card carrying UCP members, giving them significantly more than a lot of other ridings.  

Kossowan says the four candidates, Morgan Nagel, Peter Guthrie, and Laura Talsma from Cochrane and Airdrie's Mauri Stiff were asked their opinions on a variety of issues.  

"Everybody is concerned about infrastructure, roads, health care, education and a number of questions came up about those types of topics."

Kossowan says no one in the audience directly brought up the issue of the carbon tax, but all four candidates reiterated that they were on side with UCP leader Jason Kenney who intends to repeal the tax should the UCP win next year's provincial election in Alberta.  

The forum tonight in Airdrie will be run exactly the same way as the one in Cochrane.  Kossowan says it's a forum and not a debate.  

"How we run them is we have a moderator that's neutral from outside the constituency that comes in and he's given a number of questions to ask each of the nominees and each nominee gets to answer every question.  Every nominee was given the three minutes for opening remarks, they were given three minutes for closing remarks and they were each given two minutes to respond to the question that was asked by the moderator."

Dr. Joel Christie will serve as the moderator at tonight's meeting which will run from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm at the Town and Country Centre at 275 Jensen Drive NE.

The four candidates applied to both Elections Alberta and the UCP by last Friday's deadline.  Ian Chitwood filed papers with Elections Alberta but decided not to continue with his nomination bid.    

The UCP nominee for Airdrie-Cochrane will be decided in a pair of nomination contests.  The first will go Thursday, October 18th from noon to 8:00 pm at the Golden Rod Community Hall with the second on Saturday, October 20th between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm at the Cochrane RancheHouse.

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