Back when Glen Clark was B.C.’s premier and Gordon Campbell was Opposition leader, a Vancouver newspaper gave them an on-the-spot quiz, testing their knowledge of the people and places in the B.C. Interior. Neither got a passing grade.
I wonder how the current leaders would do on a similar quiz.
Mr. Adrian Dix did travel about during the NDP leadership race. Premier Christy Clark may know more about B.C. than she lets on, but instead of haring off to foreign climes to sell B.C. resources, she might take time to tour the province and meet people who live in the hinterlands.
Although acknowledging B.C. won’t get many jobs from the Enbridge pipeline, Ms. Clark says the project will be good for Canada. Maybe she should visit people who live along the route.
She might even go to Hartley Bay, where residents can tell her about the two marine “incidents” they have experienced, and why they fear tanker traffic.
In the Peace River country she could check out the water situation and talk to people who know the negative side of natural gas extraction (sour gas and the fracking process).
She could look at the land that would be lost to the proposed Site C dam, and tour the turbines at the Peace Canyon generating station downstream from the Bennett Dam. The station is the primary source of hydroelectricity for all of B.C., but according to reports, the turbines are shut down because BC Hydro is obligated to buy power from some private providers instead of using its own.
On the way home she could visit the Nemiah Valley.
I appreciate and share Ms. Clark’s concerns over the nation’s economics, but she is not the prime minister of Canada (yet, anyway) and I wish she would put the interests of “ordinary” British Columbians somewhere nearer the top of her agenda.
Diana French is a freelance columnist for the Tribune. She is a former Tribune editor, retired teacher, historian, and book author.
