The South Queens Chamber of Commerce is organizing a meet-and-greet in Liverpool with candidates in South Shore-St. Margarets. (Elections Canada)

Voters in Queens County will get a chance to meet some of the candidates vying to be the next MP for South Shore-St. Margarets.

The South Queens Chamber of Commerce and Main and Mersey Dining Room and Coffee Bar in Liverpool are teaming up for a candidate Q&A on Mon., April 21 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Ashley Christian is president of the chamber of commerce.

“The idea is a casual meet-and-greet forum,” Christian said. “What we’re going to be doing is casual networking and then allowing each of the candidates five to 10 minutes to introduce themselves to the group and then we intend to take questions from the floor. So we expect one hour of a more formal question-and-answer period and then another hour of just casual networking.”

Christian said she expects three of the five candidates to be at the event: Liberal Jessica Fancy-Landry, the Green Party’s Mark Embrett and Patrick Boyd of the People’s Party of Canada.

Conservative Rick Perkins, who is running for re-election, could not make it.

Christian did not know whether Independent candidate Hayden Henderson will be at the event. Henderson is the outreach director for the youth wing of the NDP. He was a last-minute addition to the ballot after the NDP’s Brendan Mosher dropped out and has since been endorsed by the NDP. 

“We really wanted to give the citizens of Queens County an opportunity to meet everyone, hear their platforms, hear what’s important to them and ask them questions,” Christian said.

The event is free, though people have to register at this link. The federal election is April 28.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Rick Perkins, Jessica Fancy-Landry, Mark Embrett and Patrick Boyd are four of the candidates running in South Shore-St. Margarets. Not pictured is Hayden Henderson.

Four people will be trying to unseat Rick Perkins as the South Shore-St. Margarets representative in the April 28 federal election.

Perkins beat Liberal MP Bernadette Jordan in 2021, after running unsuccessfully against her in 2019.

Since the last election, the riding has been redrawn, with part of it being absorbed into Halifax West. Nominations closed on Monday.

Liberal Jessica Fancy-Landry will be trying to take the seat back from Perkins. The teacher at Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin is originally from Caledonia and lives in Bridgewater.

Green Party candidate Mark Embrett is an implementation scientist with Nova Scotia Health and lives in Hubbards.

Patrick Boyd is running for the People’s Party of Canada. He runs a consulting firm.

The NDP don’t have a registered candidate in the riding. Their declared candidate Brendan Mosher dropped out at the last minute. According to a Facebook post on his candidate page on Tuesday, he said that he decided against running “after a long consideration and some last minute delays.”

He edited the post to say that Hayden Henderson would be running for the party in the riding.

Henderson is listed on the Elections Canada website as an Independent. According to the federal agency, “if an endorsement by a political party cannot be confirmed within 48 hours of the prospective candidate submitting their nomination paper, … the word ‘Independent’ (will) appear under their name on the ballot.”

Perkins won South Shore-St. Margarets in 2021 by about 2,000 votes, or 40 per cent. Jordan got 37 per cent, while the NDP’s Olivia Dorey captured 19 per cent.

QCCR plans to publish interviews with all candidates.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com