While jobs was the topic of last night’s NDP leadership all-candidates debate in Terrace, childcare, education, and even the local Mt. Layton Hotsprings made it on the agenda.
Around 130 people packed into Gators below the Best Western Terrace Inn last night to hear what the five candidates aiming for the leadership of the BC New Democratic Party had to say.
The candidates have been touring the province participating in all-candidate debates this past month trying to garner votes and discussing different topics in different communities.
Vancouver-Kingsway MLA Adrian Dix, Port Coquitlam MLA Mike Farnworth, Juan de Fuca MLA John Horgan, Dana Larsen, and Powell River-Sunshine Coast Nicholas Simons were each given a few minutes of introduction, then each had time to answer eight questions before closing remarks.
Three questions were prepared by stakeholders, and dealt with how to help communities transition to a low-carbon economy, youth employment, and trades training.
Five questions were submitted by the audience or people online and were drawn randomly out of a box. The question of why the local hotspring resource is being squandered was one of them, while others were on the ambulance service, daycare, farming, and the forestry industry.
While Dix and Simons admitted they didn’t know that much about Mt. Layton Hotsprings, Farnworth said his partner comes from Terrace and said the hotsprings should be a focal point of tourism and marketing in the area.
“We need a government in Victoria that will work with communities to make sure that assets like that are not squandered, that they may remain in the public domain,” Farnworth said, saying that the government needs to put the public interest first.
Horgan agreed that the transfer of public assets into private hands needs to be addressed.
“These are our public resources and our public assets, and at a time when we’re in an economic downturn, you want to seize those opportunities for the public benefit, not try and transfer them to private hands,” he said. “I have no quarrel with people making money…we need a couple of rules of engagement, however. If you want to invest in British Columbia, respect workers, respect our environmental regulations, and guess what – pay a few taxes.”
Public assets for private profit also came up during the question regarding improving the forest industry.
Larsen said there’s been an erosion of power from the people in the province when it comes to resources.
“Part of this is how they (the Liberals) are dealing with our forests, and part of that is how they’re giving away our rivers….all of this is part of a trend towards handing over the power from our democratically elected government to unelected, top down, hierarchical corporations that have no interest in the long-term benefit of our province,” he said, saying that local communities should have the power.
Dix pointed out that thousands of jobs have been lost in the forest industry, and the value of exports has decreased as well.
“The next government of British Columbia…will be presented with a choice,” he said. “Will they continue to allow the export of jobs from British Columbia? Will they continue to allow a ministry of forestry or a ministry of environment that has no officials to enforce the law…or are we going to change that? Are we going to invest in public servants to protect our forests and ensure good management? Are we going to invest in silviculture and not have a million extra hectares of not sufficiently restocked land? Or are we going to allow a BC Liberal government to further decimate the industry?”
Simons said there needs to be a lot of changes in the forest industry, like tenure reform and exporting goods.
“That relationship between money and policy, we’ve got to cut that out. We’ve got to go, ‘what is in the best interest of us,'” he said. “Our forest policy, our policy around hydroelectric development, our policy around all our resources, need to be seen in the long term.”
Members of the NDP choose their leader April 17.
The party’s leader Carole James announced her resignation last December, and New Westminister MLA Dawn Black is acting as interim leader.
