Kootenay East BC Liberal candidate Bill Bennett is calling on NDP candidate Troy Sebastian to stand up for Elk Valley communities and against his leader Carole James for the NDP plan which will result in the layoff of up to 60,000 British Columbians in rural, resource dependent communities.
April 25, 2009
FERNIE – Kootenay East BC Liberal candidate Bill Bennett is calling on NDP candidate Troy Sebastian to stand up for Elk Valley communities and against his leader Carole James for the NDP plan which will result in the layoff of up to 60,000 British Columbians in rural, resource dependent communities.
“It is Troy Sebastian’s responsibility to stand up for the residents of the Elk Valley and tell Carole James her reckless job killing plan must be stopped now,” says Bennett. “Carole James and the NDP just don’t get the importance of the mining industry in the Elk Valley and this plan must be stopped – today. Why in the world would you want to create a system that punishes hard working people and hurts the environment? Only the NDP would think that’s the way to move the economy forward. We need to be creating jobs, not killing them as the NDP propose.”
Simon Fraser University professor Marc Jaccard issued a report earlier this month that showed that up to 60,000 jobs would be killed under the NDP plan. “It is the smelting, the aluminum, zinc, lime, cement, pulp and paper, these are the industries where there would be production decreases and in some cases shutdowns would occur,” said Jaccard, who served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jaccard’s findings are echoed by leading environmental organizations - the David Suzuki Foundation, the Pembina Institute and Forest Ethics -who said if the NDP has the chance to implement its irresponsible policies British Columbia will lose its pre-eminent position as a global environmental leader, fall far short of the province’s climate change targets and put thousands of jobs at risk across the province.
“This is a time for leadership, for stability and proven financial competence,” says Bennett. “Workers deserve to know the government is going to help them, not try and put them out of a job. Carole James and the NDP are proposing an incredibly reckless plan that will cost jobs, hurt the environment and take B.C. back to the 1990s when our economy was last in Canada. We simply can’t afford the NDP.”
