The issue of firearms regulations ended up being the most engaging aspect of an all-candidates forum in Houston April 16.

Both Rod Taylor, leader of the Christian Heritage Party, and Conservative candidate Ellis Ross said their parties support reduction of firearm regulations 鈥攕tatements which drew loud applause from the audience of approximately 85 people.

"We stand in protection of the right of you, as citizens of Canada, to own and possess firearms for shooting sports, for hunting and for self-defence," Taylor said. "There should be no more attempts to take your guns away from you."

"You don't take guns away from law-abiding citizens. To address crime, you go after criminals," Ross said.

NDP incumbent Bachrach was pressed about his approach to firearm regulations by audience member Jonathan Dieleman, who owns Dieleman鈥檚 Sporting Goods in Houston.

Dieleman took the mic during question period and said Nathan Penner, who was also present in the audience, had presented Bachrach with a petition calling on the federal government to stop any current and future bans on hunting and sport-shooting firearms.

Dieleman asked Bachrach why he did not sponsor the petition in the House of Commons, despite it coming from Penner who was one of Bachrach's constituents. Instead, Dieleman said, the petition was sponsored by Conservative Members of Parliament from other ridings.

"My question to you is, are you here representing all of your constituents or the ones that you agree with?" Dieleman asked Bachrach.

Bachrach said the situation with the petition was a "dirty trick" orchestrated by the Conservative party to smear him, adding that multiple Conservative MPs presented the petition in the House of Commons.

"The way that the Conservative buddies all lined up in the House of Commons to try to, you know, shame and blame me. That is dirty politics. That's not the way we do it in the North, right?" Bachrach said. "As neighbours, we're straight up with each other, we sit down, we look each other in the eye, we're going to have differences of opinion. I would be happy to present a petition in the House of Commons that is done the proper way, that's formatted correctly, and where I'm aware of what the intention of the person is."

Penner asked Bachrach to state plainly whether he supported the petition.

"'I'm looking for truth and accountability in our leaders, and I just didn't find that in the way that you spoke about firearms and the way that you voted with Trudeau," Penner said. "Yes or no, did you hold a petition in your hand and refuse to support it?"  

Bachrach said the petition had no signatures when Penner initially presented it to him.

"Nathan, I was a bit confused, because when you came into my office, you were quite nervous, and the petition was essentially a blank piece of paper with a few words at the top and no signatures, and it felt like something was up. I've got to say it didn't feel like a straight-up interaction," Bachrach said. "As a neighbour and as someone you know, I've given you a lot of time in my office, we've talked for hours about different issues, and you broke my trust when you did that. I'm always up for a conversation about firearms, and I understand that you and I have different ideas. I think that's important, but what you did was not cool."

Speaking to one another after the forum, Bachrach and Penner shook hands.

The audience included people from Smithers and Telkwa, according to the Houston and District Chamber of Commerce, which organized the event.

Not in attendance were Inderpal Dhillon of the Liberal Party of Canada and Adeana Young of the Green Party of Canada.

Candidates discussed a wide range of issues, including economic diversification in the North, how to combat tariffs imposed by the United States government, inter-provincial trade, immigration policy, the North Coast oil tanker ban, and electoral reform.

Jonathan Van Barneveld, a councillor with the District of Houston, asked Ross why he, in his former provincial role as MLA for the Skeena riding, voted against a provincial NDP budget that created the Northwest BC Resource Benefits Alliance (RBA), a program that takes funds taxed from resource extraction and returns the money to communities in the Northwest. Last year, the fund directed $250 million over five years to municipalities in the region.

Ross said he voted against the budget for other reasons.

"There were other issues at play. It was actually about the debt that the B.C. government was going to do. It was about their health care allocations. It was about the crime allocations. It was about the drug policies they were bringing in with the Liberals at the time from Ottawa. But it wasn't based on the RBA," Ross said.

Bachrach used a rebuttal to respond to Ross's comments regarding the RBA. Bachrach said that he was part of the negotiating process for the RBA in his former role as Mayor of Smithers. He said a coalition of northwest municipalities tried for a long time to get the BC Liberal government to form an RBA, but it didn't come together until the NDP formed government.

"I was at the mayor's table with your mayor and with mayors of all the communities up and down our region, sitting down with the BC Liberal government and making the case that when billions of dollars of resource revenue come out of this region, come out of Houston, some of that money has to come back. The communities deserve it," Bachrach said.

"Every single meeting with those BC Liberal ministers, they turned us down. And I know that the RBA committee went specifically to my conservative opponent and asked him to back their work and to help them land this deal."

The final question of the evening came from audience member Marcus Chorney, 11, who asked all the candidates what makes them stand out that would encourage the young man to vote for them in the future.

Taylor responded first, saying he represents traditional values.

"We stand on protection of innocent human life, the restoration of traditional family values, marriage between a man and a woman, freedom of conscience, freedom of worship and freedom of speech," he said.

Ross said every decision he makes needs to lift people up.

"That's why I pushed so hard for the economy. The job is what actually uplifted our people from poverty, and yes, it was oil, it was gas, it was mining, it was forestry," he said.

"I go from the bottom up in terms of decision-making, instead of the top down. I don't believe in making decisions for a party or for a government. I'm really for the people, because that's where I came from. I'm just a common average person, and we should get common average persons into the House of Commons."

Ross added that Chorney should run for student council at school because it was great to see his political engagement.

Bachrach noted Chorney was around the same age as his daughters and identified three core issues facing future generations that he would work to combat.

"Economic inequality, and the fact that in Canada, the rich are getting richer, and not just the poor, are getting poorer, that the middle class working people are falling behind. And that's a structural flaw in our system, and we need to do more to combat it, so the young people like you have opportunity," Bachrach said. 

"The second thing is artificial intelligence and AI and the impact on our democracy. And the third thing is global climate change, it's an incredibly destabilizing force. It's going to affect our economy, it's going to affect national security, it's going to affect pretty much every aspect of our lives."