Federal New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair is personally touring northern BC, visiting industries and local government, alike.
Both Mulcair and Skeena – Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen are visiting sites, seeing both the positive and negative, such as the infamous Mount Polley mine disaster from two weeks ago.
Mulcair says the province had ample warning the disaster was going to happen and are misleading the public in treating it like it was an “act of god”.
‘I think that any responsible approach is to clamp down, we’re going to inspect and we’re going to enforce,’ Mulcair says. ‘Enforcement is the key, when I was the Environment Minister I had the reputation for being a touch enforcer, but I enforced the law and applied it equally to everyone.’
He accuses the feds of giving some companies a “free pass” but assures that wouldn’t happen under an NDP government.
In response to mines minister Bell Bennett’s fear that all resource potential in the north could be lost after the Mount Polley disaster, Mulcair says new laws aren’t the answer, he wants to enforce the laws we already have.
‘The Conservatives have been going in the opposite direction, they’ve been scaling back existing protection, not even enforcing the little bit that’s left,’ he says.
Looking at the two Conservative seats in the PG area, he says New Democrats have some work to do to promote their agenda and represent their view of Northern BC in Ottawa.
‘We have a different view, we have a progressive view, we want to maintain on the social side, things like free and universal public medicare, on the development side we want the economy to progress in a sustainable way, we certainly want to see people doing better, but we want it to be evenly spread,’ Mulcair says.
(Photo courtesy the New Democrat party of Canada).
