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Written by Citizen Staff
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Tuesday, 02 December 2008 |
Carole James rolled into town Monday and she's looking to pick a fight.
Admittedly, the NDP leader hasn't exactly been blazing a trail of the dead lately but she is riding a pair of byelection wins and some strong polling numbers. Her populist broadsides on the carbon tax -- lamentable as they are in her embrace of expediency -- seem to have found their range, especially in rural B.C. And, while it's hard to imagine James throwing it down with anything other than a hard "phooey" or maybe a particularly harsh "fiddlesticks," there's little doubt she's aching to put the Liberals' northern backyard to the torch.
And Prince George is as good a place as any in the province to turn into a battleground before the May elections. It's an ambitious target for the NDP that represents a lot of the big iron in the Liberal caucus -- Deputy Premier and Education Minister Shirley Bond, Forests Minister Pat Bell and northern caucus chair John Rustad. But that's where the appeal lies -- if the NDP can take out of of those three, Premier Gordon Campbell will lose a significant piece of his court.
The Liberals are no dummies -- they've invested a lot, politically, in this region and they haven't been shy with the concrete when it comes to entrenching their positions in the city, what with the Northern Sport Centre, the cancer clinic, the airport, roads, and bridges, etc. So, in keeping with the Latin proverb that the sinews of war are infinite money, James is coming with promises of her own sack of coin -- a rural revitalization fund -- and she's shopping it first in Prince George.
She's adding another slice to the wedge she's been constructing around the carbon tax, which she's hoping to drive between the Liberals' urban and rural support. It is a soft part of the government's belly because, try as he might, Campbell was never really forgiven from the patronizing label he applied to the "Heartland" in a 2003 throne speech.
James' fund plays on that resentment -- the idea that the North powers the province's economy while the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island get paid to produce froth and fluff. She unveiled the initiative at this year's UBCM, part of her response to the premier's 10-point economic plan, by saying, "Rural B.C. should benefit from the wealth you produce," and offering up a fund modelled on the Columbia Basin Trust, which created a consistently topped-up pool of money for a set region that was dispersed over time.
Referring to the CBT alone will be enough to set off the Liberals, who railed against it while in opposition. Past that, though, details on James' fund are scant and packaged with a few other throwaway promises such as repealing Bill 75, which supposedly gave the province the ability to override local decisions on large-scale development, scrapping a rule that forces municipalities to find private-sector partners for projects over $20 million and "restoring community oversight" on power generation and logging.
It's all purposely vague, but the NDP is hoping a rural revitalization fund grips enough to start loosening the screws on the Liberals' hold on Prince George. Last election, the Liberals lost the North Coast and Skeena. The fall of a Prince George riding would send the message the premier is becoming further disconnected with voters north of Williams Lake.
Obviously it's all moot if the NDP can't find legitimate candidates. But if it can, expect an almighty scrap for Prince George before the city hits the ballot box in May.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 02 December 2008 )
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