Advocacy group invites PM to brown-bag lunch
Pro-resource group will be outside Liberal fundraiser
KAMLOOPS — A resources advocacy group will serve bagged lunches on Wednesday outside the venue of a pricey fundraiser event hosted by the Liberal Party of Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will try to drum up support before the Oct. 21 federal election.
“The average person does not go out and spend $300 for lunch too often, but the average person does go and put their bagged lunch and put their work boots on and go to work — and that’s what we’re trying to say,” Share B.C. board director Dennis Giesbrecht said.
Tickets for the Liberal party event are regularly priced at $300, but reduced for Victory Fund members ($200) and for those younger than 25 ($75).
Victory Fund members are Liberals who make monthly party donations.
Giesbrecht said Share B.C. launched as a counterpoint to protesters during the War in the Woods, which resulted in environmentalists saving oldgrowth forests from clearcutting in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island in the early 1990s.
Giesbrecht, an oil and gas worker who failed to win a city council seat in the 2018 civic election, cited resources for building communities, providing jobs, supporting families and bolstering the Canadian economy. He said the “Tides groups” of the world are trying to shut down “basically every resource project.”
“We just need to get the message out there that people in Kamloops and people in B.C. support these resource-based jobs,” Giesbrecht said.
Giesbrecht expects between 50 and 200 people to join the Share B.C. event, noting it will be peaceful. He is also inviting the prime minister to join and said a bagged lunch will be waiting for him with Justin Trudeau’s initials on it.
“Come on out and have lunch with us,” Giesbrecht said when asked about his message to Trudeau. “We’ll have a lunch bag for him and he can come and have a sandwich and talk to the people with boots on the ground.”
Giesbrecht said the group is willing to work with any government. Asked about the federal government’s purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline, for which Trudeau has been criticized by environmentalists, Giesbrecht said it was unnecessary.
“We had a private company who was willing to spend billions of dollars,” he said. “They had all the approvals in place. The thing that’s terrifying, we’ve had the announcements of natural gas, LNG projects, they’re starting to move ahead (in B.C.), but the same protest groups are shutting those down. Even though, whether it’s Trans Mountain or gas projects, they’ve ticked all the boxes, they’ve jumped through all the hoops and Trans Mountain still got shut down.”
What will be on the bagged-lunch menu remains unclear.
“My original plan was bologna sandwiches,” Giesbrecht said.