Cariboo – Prince George candidates sound off on spike in local unemployment rate

The unemployment rate is seeing a rapid rise in Prince George.

It now sits at 7.7%, up 3 points, from 4.7% this time last year. The national average sits at 7% and there are 4000 fewer people in the workforce in PG.

My PG Now asked the candidates for Cariboo – Prince George in the upcoming election what they would do to point the needle back in the right direction.

Liberal Party candidate Tracy Calogheros;

“I think one of the areas where the Liberal platform can help; is not only their infrastructure investments targeted at projects on municipalities’ wishlists, but also on the targeting of clean jobs and research and development where they are looking at responsible resource development with cultural and environmental protections.

I think that this area is in many ways resource driven. even though we’ve diversified a lot in Prince George, we are still a resource economy in Northern BC. So being able to access those resources and get them to market responsibly really is something we need to do to ensure continued employment in the area.”

Green Party candidate Richard Jacques;

“I don’t know where these numbers are coming from, I know a lot of friends here that have an average income of $65-70k a year.

Stats Canada, the numbers that they are getting… there are a whole bunch of different variations, I don’t think the number is accurate, I really don’t. I see Prince George as going upward and upward.

When touring in the area, I haven’t seen too many unhappy people. I think everyone is working and having a great time.”

Trent Derrick of the NDP;

“We want to focus on the middle class, we want to focus on developing manufacturing in Canada. We also want to focus on building strong small business. We plan on lowering the small business tax from 11 to 9 percent.

80 percent of people are employed by small business and small business re invest in themselves and into the communities… larger tax cuts for larger corporations usually pull the money out of the community.”

Independent candidate Sheldon Clare;

“The government has relied extensively on a very narrow window of economic growth, that being resource extraction as it’s primary means of driving the economy. That has not worked because we are entering the boom bust cycles of such ventures.

What I would do to change this is to consider looking at a much more diversified economy. We need to make sure people are getting the education they need to adapt to a changing economic situation within Canada.

We need to ensure that the tech sector get good support and look after our agricultural, forestry and other renewable resources and not just rely on resource extraction.”

Conservative candidate Todd Doherty did not respond to interview requests.