The territory’s fairly quiet federal election campaign is about to hear more from local candidates.

Tonight kicks off the first of various events featuring the four candidates for the Yukon.

The Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition will host its event called Eat, Think, Vote tonight at CYO Hall.

The community meal and conversation with candidates will start at 5 p.m.

The first all-candidates’ debate will take shape at Yukon College tomorrow at lunchtime.

Three of the candidates will be at the college, with Green Party candidate Frank de Jong participating via video conferencing from Dawson City.

The debate’s moderator, Matt Landry, told the Star the candidates have been given broad topics, including the subjects of First Nations, education, socioeconomic issues and the environment.

The vice-president of the college’s student union added the debate’s location – called The Pit – is a popular lunchtime spot at the school, so it will likely bring lots of students out.

The Association franco-yukonaise has its candidate debate in French scheduled for 10:45 a.m. Saturday at the Coast High Country Inn.

Yukon First Nations and the Council of Yukon First Nations will host their forum on Sept. 29 to hear the candidates’ perspectives on issues pertaining to the territory’s aboriginal population.

Conservative Ryan Leef is the only candidate who has not confirmed his or her attendance to this forum. It is scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Coast High Country Inn.

The conversations will take a more diversified turn next week, with a high school assembly as well as a more eccentric evening event on the same day.

F.H. Collins Secondary School will host candidates on the morning of Sept. 30 – and students will “vote” for their favourite candidate two weeks after they come to the school.

A local group called SMRT Pop Ups is hosting an alternative sort of debate modeled after speed dating – it will consist of two- to three-minute candid “dates” with each of the municipal and federal election candidates.

The group encourages aspiring “daters” to pre-book their 30-minute time slots on its event website yukonpoliticalspeeddating.eventbrite.com. The mingling will start at 5 p.m. and run until 9 p.m.

Candidates will be put in the hot seat three days in a row the week after.

Hot-button issues like Bill S-6 and the Peel watershed will likely get attention at an environmental forum hosted by CPAWS-Yukon and the Yukon Conservation Society on Oct. 6 at 7 p.m.

The Facebook event for the forum indicates that attendees should bring their own questions on key environmental issues.

BYTE empowering youth will target younger voters at its own forum at Baked Café the next evening.

Communications co-ordinator Kara Johancsik said the topics for questions will come from the organization’s Yukon Youth Want social media campaign – BYTE has been stopping young people on the street, getting them to write down issues that are important to them on white boards and taking their photos.

Johancsik said she suspects affordable housing and electoral reform will be brought up at the forum.

“We want to bring youth issues to the attention of the candidates and hopefully build some voter engagement,” she said.

The next day, a local media outlet will host the candidates at the Coast High Country Inn.

CBC Yukon’s debate with federal candidates is planned for the evening of Oct. 8 – the same night the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a municipal election debate.

Five days before the federal election, the Yukon Chamber of Commerce’s all-candidates’ debate will take place at the popular debate location, the Coast High Country Inn, at 7 p.m.

The chamber has already confirmed that all four candidates – Leef, Liberal candidate Larry Bagnell, Melissa Atkinson for the New Democrats and de Jong – will attend the debate.

The territory’s former Libertarian candidate, Cory Laidler, dropped out of the election race last week.