So Todd Whitcombe's latest column is basically trying to say the 1990's under the NDP weren't really that bad, at least not nearly as bad as the B.C. Liberals are trying to remind people. Really? That's the best defense you can mount for a lost decade? This is the same decade where North America ran up the largest economic expansion in man's recorded history, and the same one we were forced to sit and watch from the sidelines as investments passed on by and went to other economies all around us. He quote's the population figures showing B.C. actually grew during the 1990's, but many of us still remember when the sign at the 97 & 16 had to be actually reduced. Sure Vancouver perhaps grew, but northern B.C. was not growing, it was rushing to become a vast, jobless wasteland devoid of any meaningful investment.
What people in this province forget is that while 70 per cent of the revenues that pay for our infrastructure and services come from the resource sector and northern B.C., it is predicated on one thing only; the confidence others have in investing here. A vote for anything but the existing government will evaporate the very confidence which is fuelling our economy, and overnight you will watch those revenue's begin the same decline. In fact, there is already a slow freeze being felt as investment holds back waiting on the election outcome.
The world today is a scary enough, but far more so under the prospect of the NDP, and having less money and more debt. We can't afford another lost decade. To the rest of the world, only the B.C. Liberals represent free enterprise and competent management required to sustain investment in our future. So please don't sit up University Hill and re-write history with some jumbled statistics, and then try to tell us it wasn't so bad. For those of us who depend on investment and not a government paycheque, it was beyond bad.
Chris Sitter
Prince George
