MLAs Shirley Bond and Mike Morris are criticizing Premier John Horgan about not paying enough attention to their ridings. Talk about being twofaced.
The first thing the BC Liberals did back in 2001was tear up every signed government contract, then they gutted the Labour Relations Board making it near impossible to organize for union representation delivering better wages, a union pension plan and an extended health and welfare coverage.
I’m sure you’re glad to have the MLA health and welfare plan with a pension plan second to none.
Your Liberal government also failed to get the LNG construction started. It only took the NDP a few months in power to get the LNG build started by offering tax breaks. So instead of $40 billion, they will pay about $36 billion in taxes over its operational years. A lot of money we would have lost with your failure to get a $40 billion construction project started , missing out on tens of millions of man-hours to complete this project. You and your Liberal government failed the people of B.C. by not offering the incentives the LNG companies needed for moving forward on such a big business gamble .
For all 16 years of your Liberal government rule, all mega taxpayer projects were given to the Christian Labour Association of Alberta. They would bring their own trades people from Alberta, leaving our B.C. trades people out of work.
For more than a decade and a half, your government can be described as taking food off the table of people that reside here with either a mortgage or rent to pay.
Let’s go back to 2001 again when you quickly sold the three PacifiCat ferries ($465 million to build the three ferries) that were built during the previous NDP government. Your government immediately auctioned them off or - better said - gave them away for $6.5 million each to the very engineer that designed them in Washington State, USAHi.
Because of the design and fast speeds attainable, the PacifiCat Ferry produced a bigger wake than the slower conventional ferry and property owners complained about the higher waves along their shoreline. So instead of slowing down the ferry speed at the start and end points by seven or eight minutes at each end, it would still be more than a half hour faster than the conventional ferry trip.
And let’s not forget that as soon as your Liberal government got elected, you took all funding from the Industry Training Authority (ITA) for trades training in B.C., leaving training for a new generation of young apprentices on the shoulders of private companies to do the necessary training needed.
By contrast, the Horgan government instituted the new Community Benefits Program on all major government construction projects where local hires and Indigenous employment are included with the first individuals hired.Trades people in this province now have gained rightful employment on all major government projects now that the NDP is running the show.
You and your Liberal colleagues are in the opposition now for many good reasons, but especially because you failed B.C. trades people by starving them out of work for so many years. A lot of our trades people could be walking around with a more lucrative pension plan if it weren't for you giving employment away to non-union Alberta construction companies..
Need I say more about what a failure you and your Liberal government were to the citizens of our province?
Miles Thomas
Prince George
