Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau will make his second Yellowknife appearance of the year later this week.
According to the campaign team of Michael McLeod, the Liberal Party’s candidate in the NWT, Trudeau will visit the city on Friday. The exact timings and location are yet to be confirmed.
Conservative leader Stephen Harper made a brief stop in Hay River in August, while the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair and Green Party leader have yet to make public appearances in the NWT this campaign.
Trudeau is the only leader of a major federal party yet to respond to a letter from NWT Premier Bob McLeod, asking parties to set out their plans for the North.
He last visited Yellowknife in January, where he addressed Liberal plans for a carbon tax and environmental protection measures.
Read: New Democrats launch Northern plan ahead of federal election
Read: Conservative leader Harper sets out NWT plans in letter
“What will help the North is if we can actually start developing our northern resources in a responsible way,” Trudeau told Moose FM at the time.
He added: “If there had been some sort of price on carbon, we would already have passed at least Keystone XL and perhaps some other pipelines. That failure to understand that our lack of environmental responsibility is hurting our economy is affecting us.
“Everyone has said we need a price on carbon – the kind of support we give to remote communities in terms of their energy needs to be separate from that, and needs to continue.”
January: Trudeau demands ‘responsible’ development of North
Trudeau’s Liberals and Harper’s Conservatives are roughly tied in the latest federal polls, at around 32 percent each. Mulcair’s New Democrats trail on 25 percent, with May’s Greens on four percent.
Federal candidates will be under the spotlight in Yellowknife on Wednesday at a public forum.
McLeod, Conservative candidate Floyd Roland, Green candidate John Moore and the NDP’s Dennis Bevington have been invited to face questions from organizations like Ecology North, the Dene Nation and the NWT Status of Women Council.
They will later take questions from the floor. The event begins at 7pm at Northern United Place. Election day is on October 19.
