Scheer ties sawmill troubles to Liberal tail
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer leveled plenty of blame against the federal Liberals for the woes B.C.’s forest industry is suffering as he paid a visit to Prince George on Monday.
“One hundred per cent,” he said when asked if there is a connection between the curtailments and layoffs the Interior’s lumber producers have recently invoked and Trudeau government policies.
Companies have pinned the cutbacks in production on a lack of fibre due to the mountain pine beetle, which ate through roughly half of B.C.’s harvestable timber supply. But Scheer said the federal government has played a role too and linked the issue to Canadianbased producers’ ongoing quest to expand into the United States.
“When I’ve talked to people who say they’ve made decisions not to invest in Canada, they’ve perhaps opened up a second part of their business in the U.S. because our government has been raising taxes and putting in new regulatory burdens,” Scheer said.
“And that impact (is) on all communities – small, big, northern B.C., southern B.C., all over Canada. There is absolutely a tie in to Liberal policy.”
Canfor said last week it has reached a deal to purchase a sawmill in South Carolina. Once completed, it will raise to 16 the number of operations it owns in the Southern United States. West Fraser has 21 sawmills in the region.
Scheer and local MPs Todd Doherty and Bob Zimmer met with about 40 people at a local hotel Monday. Scheer said two members of the city’s real estate industry told him more and more people are unable to buy a home because of federal government policies around mortgages.
In January, a new stress test invoked by federal Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions came into effect. It requires buyers to afford the greater of two percentage points above the contractual mortgage rate or the fiveyear benchmark rate published by the Bank of Canada.
“There is absolutely a link between government policy and what people are feeling here today,” Scheer said.
While the Liberals made a “great spectacle” about reaching the new trade agreement with the United States and Mexico, “they didn’t solve softwood lumber,” Scheer also noted.
With another election about a year away, Scheer predicted voters will see through the charisma Trudeau evoked during the last campaign and question whether his policies have actually improved their quality of life.
“I’m getting a lot of people telling me, ‘I’m kind of done with the selfies, I’m kind of done with the theatrics,’ and they want to see a government that’s actually led by people who have real-world experiences,” Scheer said.
“I can relate to the challenges that most Canadians face. I grew up in a very modest household with two parents who had to work, and the stress at the end of the month of paying off debt and paying off bills and that’s who our party is speaking to.”
Scheer said the government’s growing deficit has become top of mind among the voters he’s talked to and accused the Liberals of squandering a strong fiscal position.
“What happens when that global growth slows down? Canada’s not going to be able to respond to that,” he said.
And he said there is a real desire to craft a national energy strategy and a lot of frustration about the fact consumers in the east must buy their oil from Saudi Arabia because there is no pipeline to ship oil to that region from western Canada.
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer says he wants to tackle a surge of gun violence in Canada by targeting criminals who use weapons illegally, rather than supporting an outright handgun ban.
Scheer is to unveil the second part of his plan for improving public safety today in Delta: a policy plank focused entirely on guns.
It is a response to the calls for a ban on handguns and assault weapons in Canada, and instead proposes to give police more tools and write tougher laws to crack down on illegal gun users in Canada.
Scheer’s gun policy includes seven new policy measures that will target repeat offenders or criminals that help to make illegal guns available on the streets. They include tougher sentences for those who knowingly possess smuggled weapons and cracking down on socalled “straw purchases” in which guns bought by otherwise legal buyers are diverted to criminal markets. New penalties for selling guns to people already prohibited from possessing them are also part of the Conservative plan.
“We need to get guns out of the hands of people who use them to commit crimes, and that’s what this policy will do,” said a senior Conservative party official. “A handgun ban may sound like a good idea, but it will only make criminals out of responsible gun owners while doing nothing to prevent criminals from getting guns.”
Scheer is expected to propose a special task force to try to keep guns from being smuggled in from the United States.
Canada has had a rash of gun killings this year, including a mass shooting on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue in July that killed an 18-yearold woman and a 10-year-old girl and injured 13 others.
A shooting this weekend at a communityhousing complex in Toronto was the 90th homicide this year in the city, breaking the record for the deadliest year in Toronto since 1991.
Calls for Ottawa to ban handguns and assault weapons have been growing, including from both Montreal and Toronto city councils.
Scheer has taken a strong stance against the push for a handgun ban, saying it would penalize law-abiding gun owners while failing to address the ongoing use and smuggling of illegal guns by criminals and gang members.
Scheer announced the first part of his public safety policy earlier this month, in which he outlined more punitive measures for gang members and organized crime organizations.
He also wants to impose tougher jail sentences and limit parole and bail opportunities for gang members who are repeat and violent offenders.
Since 2013, gang-related homicides in Canada’s largest cities have almost doubled, according to Public Safety Canada.