Things got a little heated on Tuesday night at the third Brampton mayoral debate of the campaign season — but not among the candidates.

The debate, featuring four of the seven candidates vying for the mayor's office on Oct. 22, was hosted by Brampton Focus at The Rose Theatre and drew a reported 750 spectators.

Incumbent Linda Jeffrey, Patrick Brown, Baljit Gosal and Brampton councillor John Sprovieri squared off in an atmosphere sounding as much like a sporting event at times as a political debate.

While all four candidates kept their cool among each other and mostly stayed on message, an engaged and vocal crowd cheered and jeered the candidates throughout the hour-and-a-half exchange, often interrupting and drowning them out.

The candidates presented their platforms on several local issues raised by the four-member questioning panel, ranging from crime, the downtown LRT and healthcare, to diversity, the arts the city's image and several others.

The crowd's participation made it easy to decipher the hot button issues, with the candidates’ responses to crime, LRT, diversity and inclusion, cannabis and healthcare drawing the loudest reactions from spectators.

As was the case in the first debate, hosted by the Brampton Board of Trade on Sept. 17, Brown, Gosal and Sprovieri focused a lot of attention on Jeffrey's leadership and funding advocacy for the city. All three painted some of her banner initiatives, such as the coming downtown Ryerson University campus, as a loss for the city.

“We have a university that’s going to be a satellite university,” said Gosal, adding he believes the city should have advocated harder for a full campus.

“Vaughan is getting a beautiful new subway, Scarborough is getting 10 times the funding (for transit) that Brampton is getting despite Brampton being bigger. What’s the difference? The difference is they had politicians, they had mayors and MPs and MPPs that stood up for their communities,” argued Brown.

Jeffrey, a political veteran and experienced debater in her own right, held her own amid the criticism from all sides. She confidently defended her record while dividing most of her attention between Brown and Sprovieri, often characterizing the latter as a source of dysfunction and division on council over her first term.