Rural British Columbia is the economic engine of the province. Indeed, one of the reasons Canada has weathered the financial meltdown occurring south of the border so well is because of our rich resource industries. Commodities are not produced in Vancouver and the other major population centers of the province. They are produced in communities like Prince Rupert.
For decades British Columbia’s small communities have produced wealth for the province. Now, it is time to reinvest in these communities so they have the infrastructure they need to grow and thrive again, to take part in a global economy that is changing, and so that they have the capacity to refine and add value to the resources that we produce.
It is almost a crime for our raw resources to be extracted and exported, only to have finished products made from our own goods sold back to us at premium prices. We have the capacity and the skilled workforce to do more ourselves. What we need is investment in our communities, so they can join the twenty-first century.
Rather than spending nearly a billion dollars on a convention centre for Vancouver, the British Columbian government should have invested in projects to make rural communities more attractive to business. I have no doubt that if we calculated the wealth that has been taken out of Prince Rupert over the last few decades, and what has been reinvested in our community we would find that for years our resource industries have been funding infrastructure in our down south urban centers.
The New Democrat team has made a commitment to take a sustainable portion of resource revenues and set them aside in a Rural Fund. This fund will be administered by rural residents for rural residents, and it will be the first of many steps towards turning around the situation in rural British Columbia.
The Campbell Liberal government has been content to allow our communities to suffer for the last seven years. They have ignored the crisis in the forestry industry, and invested nothing or very little critical infrastructure like the Cranberry Connector. Unemployment in this region is the highest in the province, and the only time it goes down is when people leave our communities.
Prince Rupert is not a community that should be left to fend for itself. It has great potential. What is needed is a government with a vision bold enough to see beyond the forest, beyond the trees, to a workable forest industry. One that creates value, not just logs for export. We need a government that can picture our region as one of global importance, one that puts our valuable resources to work for average British Columbians.