Clark talks employment in rapid tour of ridings
Liberal party Leader Christy Clark pushed back Friday against a First Nation-led campaign calling for people to vote ABC — “anyone but Clark” — come election day.
Clark flew across the province for brief appearances in five communities, including Campbell River, Terrace and Smithers, a trio of ridings that feature First Nations candidates running for her party.
The ABC campaign, backed by Grand Chief Stewart Phillip and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, claims Clark and the Liberals “have demonstrated injurious arrogance and destructive ambivalence for our pristine ecosystems, for climate change, (and for) the rights of indigenous peoples,” among other things.
Asked by a reporter what she’d say to those who felt her government had not listened to the concerns of Aboriginal Peoples, Clark turned to economic agreements her government had signed with local First Nations and to liquid natural gas, which she described as “a generational opportunity to change the economies of communities that have lived in poverty” for too long.
She said the province needed to make sure that First Nations members received training to get jobs and that their communities received a share of the revenue from resource-extraction projects.
“It is time that kids who live in First Nations communities had an equal shot at success as all the other kids in our province — an equal shot at education, an equal shot at life, an equal shot at making the kind of living that lots of people who work here can look forward to,” Clark said, referring to employees of a water-treatment company in Richmond, where she made her remarks.
Clark said First Nations candidates in Campbell River (North Island riding), Terrace (Skeena) and Smithers (Stikine) are running for the Liberal party so they can be “in the room with us, helping us make the decisions about how we shape the future of British Columbia.”
In each of those communities and throughout the day, Clark tried to hammer home a key message: that the B.C. NDP can no longer claim they’re the party of the working people.
“I promise you, every morning when I wake up, I am thinking about how we can preserve, protect and create jobs,” Clark said. It was the first line of a set-up that she tirelessly trotted out at least four times Friday.
“Now, when John Horgan gets up every morning, he is thinking about how much more of your money he can sneak away in new taxes,” the set-up concluded.
Another recurring message Friday was a warning from Clark that U.S. President Donald Trump was determined to steal jobs from B.C. In what she positioned as a retaliatory move, Clark said she had asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to ban the export of “mostly American thermal coal” from B.C. ports.
“Because if the Americans are going to say that our lumber isn’t good enough for them, we aren’t going to sit back without a fight,” Clark said.
Clark said Trudeau responded in a letter Friday to say he would consider the idea carefully.
It is time that kids who live in First Nations communities had an equal shot at success.