The candidates running to represent Thunder Bay-Superior North in Ottawa agree there’s a lack of leadership when it comes to the Ring of Fire but disagree on who’s to blame.

Candidates Bruce Hyer, the Green Party incumbent, Andrew Foulds, NDP, Patty Hajdu, Liberals, and Richard Harvey, Conservative, met once against on the debate stage at the Valhalla Inn on Wednesday. The four candidates faced off in Marathon the day before.

The debate, which was hosted by the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce, focused heavily on the economy, business opportunities and supporting seniors. Independent candidate Robert Skaf was not invited to participate.

Each candidate gave a brief background of themselves before heading into the debate.

When it came to developing mining projects in the chromite-rich Ring of Fire area, Hajdu argued her party is the one that really shines. She said the Liberal party plans to immediately invest into infrastructure, which would help unlock the Ring of Fire.

“We have had a federal government dance around the Ring of Fire for a decade with no action,” she said.

She promised that if elected, she would fight to ensure the riding sees its share of the Liberals infrastructure investment.

Foulds described the Ring of Fire as being a $50- to $120-billion opportunity that’s unique to Northern Ontario. “What’s unfortunate is we have had no national leadership and, as we have seen, investors are walking away,” he said. “The provincial government made a couple of announcements in the last provincial election and they seem more interested in selling off hydro than actually getting something done with the Ring of Fire. Right now we have the opportunity to create good paying jobs for generations.”

He said in order to create jobs, it has to be done in full consultations with First Nations and communities while ensuring the jobs stay in Northwestern Ontario.

Hyer, who agreed with what Foulds stated, added that there’s been a failure of leadership not only at the federal level but also the provincial level.

“I don’t often agree with (Kenora Conservative candidate Greg Rickford) but Greg Rickford actually said ‘that they shouldn’t commit their share of the funds to move ahead until there is a real plan on how the province decides to spend its one billion dollars,” he said. “We don’t have a plan for infrastructure and we’ve done this wrongly for a long time.”

Harvey said the federal government did provide the province with a billion dollars for infrastructure about two years ago but it ended up somewhere else.

“I’m not sure exactly where it went. It disappeared,” he said. “There needs to be a plan in place. We do the same thing with federal transfers.”

The candidates also got into a variety of other topics including supporting small business and employment insurance premiums.

Hyer argued the Liberals and Conservatives made EI premiums into a tax and brought up how the Liberal government under Paul Martin “basically stole” $56 billion from the workers insurance fund to balance their budget.

Harvey said taxpayers and especially small business shouldn’t be supporting personal slush funds. He said his party would immediately roll back on deductions because the EI system is suppose to be revenue neutral.

He accused the Liberals and NDP of looking at payroll tax hikes.

Hajdu shot back by saying “I really love how the Conservative party just makes up whatever they want.”

She said their plan is to reduce EI premiums from 2.62 per cent to 2.31 per cent while lowering the waiting time to access EI benefits.

Foulds echoed what Hyer said arguing that the Liberals stole taxpayer money. He said it made it more difficult for people to claim their benefits.

He said the NDP are committed to freezing EI premiums for the next four years and decrease the wait times.

“We know an efficient EI system gets people back to work,” he added. “Ultimately, that’s what we want to do.”

Thunder Bay-Superior North candidates were on stage for the first hour of Wednesday’s forum, which kicked off at 6 p.m. At 7 p.m., the stage and the discussion was handed over to Thunder Bay-Rainy River candidates.