The battle for Calgary-Centre votes continued Sunday at the John Dutton Theatre between three candidates running in the by-election which is being held November 26th.

The NDP’s Dan Meades, the Liberal’s Harvey Locke and the Green Party’s Chris Turner debated in the “Cities Matter Forum” hosted by Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

Conservative candidate Joan Crockatt declined to participate, which drew criticism from the other candidates and Nenshi.

Topics included transit, deficit-spending, poverty and Locke said his vision for Calgary is to be the great city of the plains.

“We’ll never be a New York or a Rome or a London,” he said. “But we can be like Edinburgh or Barcelona or Prague, which were cities that prospered at a given point in time and chose to invest in themselves.”

Meades said his platform was about nourishing the status quo or a strong and thriving party pedigree, not about sending a message but rather sending a real opposition to Ottawa from Calgary.

Turner stressed the importance of cities and the federal government’s commitment to sustainability when it comes to natural resources.

“It’s not enough to cheerlead, that’s not the only thing that the oil and gas sector needs, that’s not what we need as we have a serious discussion about what our energy future is going to look like,” he said.

While Nenshi was pleased with Sunday’s debate, he was clearly disappointed in Crockatt’s absence.

There was also some drama before the debate even started, as Nenshi and Crockatt traded barbs on Twitter.

The Conservative candidate tweeted Nenshi directly with: “Hope you give the Conservative Party credit tomorrow for giving cities stable, predictable funding through the $2 B gas tax!”

Nenshi replied: “You could come and tell people yourself! Invitation open. When did it become my role to do the candidate’s job for her?”

The mayor also spoke about her absence shortly after the forum.

“I thought it was odd that she asked me to deliver her talking points for her when she had the opportunity to do it herself,” he said. “Every campaign makes decisions about the best way to spend their time, time is the most precious commodity during a campaign.