NDP Vancouver-West End incumbent, Spencer Herbert, is accusing the Liberals of ducking an all-candidates  forum hosted by the Alliance for Arts and Culture, originally scheduled for Monday (May 4).

According to Amir Ali Alibhai, executive director of the Alliance, a request was sent out two weeks ago to Herbert, the Liberals’ Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts Bill Bennett, and the Green Party. Only Herbert confirmed his attendance. The Alliance then turned its attentions to Liberal Minister of Finance  Colin Hansen, who cited a scheduling conflict, and then set its sights on Vancouver-False Creek candidate Mary McNeil.

Finally, said Alibhai, the  forum plans were abandoned. The Alliance is now hoping to host a   live blog where Herbert and participants from the Liberal and Green Parties would answer questions on-line submitted by members of the public.

“We were hoping, initially, that Bill [Bennett] would be available,” Alibhai explained in a phone call. “They [Bennett’s staff] took awhile to get back to us, and then finally told us that it wasn’t possible. And then Colin Hansen’s people we asked last week, and they seemed to make an attempt to see if he could do it....But it turned out he’s on the island on Monday, so he wasn’t able to make that particular date.... Mary McNeil, we haven’t heard back from her office, although we’ve made the request.”

Herbert said he did not believe scheduling conflicts were at play. “I’ve known about this debate for at least two weeks,” he said by phone. “They asked if I could attend, or if one of us could attend, and I said absolutely, and we would clear the schedule to be there, since the arts and culture community is so important in the province. And I think a scheduling difficulty is really hard to understand when they have 85 candidates that they could ask to attend. Certainly, in our campaign, sure, schedules come up, but when you’re given that kind of notice you clear the decks for the provincial advocacy association for arts and culture.”

However Alibhai said he did not believe that the Liberals were deliberately being uncooperative. “Nobody’s said, ”˜No, we don’t want to participate,’ or ”˜We don’t want to send somebody.’ It’s been usually a case of ”˜Well, we’re just busy’ or ”˜This person’s already booked,’ or, ”˜They’re not available.’... Bill Bennett, he can’t really leave his riding [of Kootenay East] during the campaign. For him to come down here, it’s a two-day thing. Colin Hansen is very much in demand, so it was hard to get him.”

Alibhai did note, however, that Mary Desprez, general manager of the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, had told him she was also “having trouble getting some of the candidates out to their all-candidates meeting on the arts.”

This is not the first all-candidates meeting the Liberals have been accused of avoiding. As Charlie Smith reported earlier today, the party is not sending a candidate to a health-care debate at the 411 Seniors Centre in downtown Vancouver on Tuesday (May 5).

And on April 27, the NDP claimed in a news release that the B.C. Liberals had backed out of the Greater Victoria Seniors' candidates meeting the previous day just an hour before the event began. That accusation followed an April 21 B.C. Teachers' Federation news release that stated the B.C. Liberals did not provide a single candidate for a forum on the school system.