By improving infrastructure and providing better services, B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins believes his party can attract more people to move and stay in northern B.C.
During a pre-election campaign stop in Prince George on Friday, Cummins announced a plan to invest $200 million over five years in infrastructure in the region.
"This money that we're talking about today is money that will be used by the municipalities for improving infrastructure within the municipalities," he said during a news conference at the Ramada. "The money would be spent at the discretion of the municipalities."
The proposed infrastructure money is part of a larger effort by the Conservatives to develop policies which will encourage people to move to the north permanently and reduce the fly-in, fly-out economy in some parts of the resource sector.
"If you can improve the infrastructure in a city, other good things will follow," he said. "People will look at that city more favourably, they'll look at it in a little better light than if they're driving from pothole to pothole."
Cummins has also pledged a review of the ambulance system in northern B.C. to ensure residents are getting adequate care and there's enough capacity to deal with the industrial sites popping up across the region.
The significant role the north plays in the provincial economy is not as well known in the more highly populated parts of the province and Cummins would like to see that change as well.
"Many British Coumbians really don't have any idea about much of British Columbia outside of the Lower Mainland, they get past Hope and they're not sure where they are," Cummins said. "If you went to downtown Vancouver with a map of B.C. and asked someone to pinpoint Prince George or Dawson Creek, I think they would be at a loss. I think that's a problem, British Columbians don't always know their province."
To that end, he said the Conservatives would educate the public in the Lower Mainland on the quality of life available in the rest of the province.
Cummins said the $200 million in infrastructure funding is in addition to any money the municipalities qualify for under the federal Building Canada fund and applies only to communities in the north because he said they are in dire need of road improvements.
The Conservative leader also wants to make changes to how municipalities can spend revenue from the gas tax so that communities will have the option to use it to maintain existing infrastructure.
"When the negotiations start in 2014 to extend that program, we want to remove that notion that the money must be directed to green or sustainable infrastructure programs," Cummins said. "We want it made very clear that that money will be used at the municipalities discretion for roads and so on."
The Conservatives currently have two candidates nominated in the region - Dan Brooks in Nechako Lakes and Terry Rysz in Prince George-Mackenzie. Cummins pledged to have a candidate announced in Prince George-Valemount within a week.
