B.C. ELECTION: Rural economic challenges a minefield for parties
Bringing industry back is top of mind in hard-hit regions, if it’s ‘done responsibly’
Projects that a couple of years ago created a construction mini boom in the Skeena riding in northwest B.C. are complete, including a $4.8-billion aluminum smelter upgrade and a $736-million power line.
The boom, which created thousands of jobs, was also fuelled by hundreds of millions spent by Shell and Chevron on planning and groundwork for their proposed liquefied natural gas export projects in the riding.
But the LNG projects, worth nearly $30 billion, have not proceeded, battered by reduced global demand, competition from new entrants such as in the U.S., and the need for energy companies to reduce capital spending after oil prices plummeted in 2015.
It means the prospects for continuing economic resurgence have dimmed considerably in the riding of Skeena, expected to be hotly contested in the May 9 election.
In the past two decades, the riding’s two main communities, Terrace and Kitimat, have been hammered by huge forestry job losses. That includes the 2010 loss of 535 high-paying jobs in Kitimat when West Fraser closed its paper mill.
There were two sawmills in Terrace; only one remains.
And while Rio Tinto’s modernization of its aluminum smelter in Kitimat secured the plant’s future, it reduced the permanent workforce by 400.
So the construction jobs were welcome.
Now, people, including those from First Nations that had found jobs in LNG development, are looking for work again, sometimes far afield, or have left the region.
“Our town is dying, losing a lot of industry, services, small businesses. It’s very, very unfortunate,” said former Kitimat mayor Joanne Monaghan.
The economic challenges facing rural communities — although they vary across the province — are expected to be a key issue in the provincial election.
But there are no simple answers that the B.C. Liberals, NDP and Greens can dish up, particularly given the minefield they face in navigating policies on jobs, protecting the environment and Aboriginal rights.
Enbridge’s $7.9-billion Northern Gateway oil pipeline through northern B.C. — meant to deliver crude from the Alberta oilsands to new markets in Asia — is a prime example of this political challenge.
The federal Liberal government issued a final “no” to the pipeline last year.
But critical blows had already been delivered long before when First Nations and municipalities in northwest B.C. came out strongly against the project over concerns a spill along a river or in the ocean would devastate the environment and the existing tourist and fisheries economy.
“Our town is dying, losing a lot of industry, services, small businesses.” — Joanne Monaghan
“If you don’t have a job and you don’t have services, it’s pretty hard to stick around.” — Ellis Ross
In the 2013 election, then NDP leader Adrian Dix learned the risk of wading into natural resource projects. He was criticized by some trade unions that traditionally support the party for suddenly announcing during the campaign he opposed Kinder Morgan’s $6.8-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion from Alberta to Burnaby, a move that had been calculated to shore up environmental support.
Ron Burnett, a past-president of the former Kitimat-Terrace Industrial Development Society, believes jobs will be the overriding issue in the election in the region, given the losses of long-term forestry jobs.
“It affects just about everybody,” he said.
Greg Knox, executive director of the SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, said LNG and mining is welcome if done right: “There are a lot of concerns about the impacts from these projects. People are not necessarily opposed, but people definitely want it to be done responsibly.”
There are 33 rural ridings in B.C., those outside the Lower Mainland and Greater Victoria.
Although some of those ridings deemed rural by Postmedia include urban areas — such as Nanaimo, Kelowna, Kamloops and Prince George — they are greatly affected by the industry in their rural regions, including forestry, mining, energy, agriculture and tourism.
In the 2013 election, the B.C. Liberals won 20 of those rural seats and the NDP the remaining 13. The previous election, the tally was Liberals 19, NDP 14.
There are regions where it is hard to imagine there being much of a change this election, notwithstanding the economic, social or environmental challenges they face.
In northeast B.C., even though the unemployment rate jumped to 10 per cent in March, twice that of the Lower Mainland, the voters in the two Peace River ridings have not voted for a left-leaning party since just after the Second World War.
Vancouver Island has been a stronghold for the NDP for decades, as have some ridings in the Kootenay region, where the unemployment rate was 8.3 per cent in March for the larger southwest corner of the province, including the Okanagan.
A Postmedia analysis, using past electoral history and margins of victory, shows there may only be a half-dozen or so rural ridings that could be in play on May 9.
But even a swing of several seats to the NDP or Liberals in rural B.C. would be a significant factor where usually the parties are separated by 15 or less seats in provincial elections.
Among the ridings in play is the Courtenay-Comox riding, formerly known as Comox Valley, won by the Liberals in the last election by less than six per cent of the votes. The riding had voted NDP in the 1990s.
Also potentially in play is Kamloops-North Thompson, where Terry Lake, who held the health portfolio, is not running again. He won the riding by only about 500 votes in 2009, but a wider margin in 2013.
In Skeena — and the other two northwest B.C. ridings of North Coast and Stikine — the NDP has won for almost two decades.
However, the margins of victory have not always been great.
In the 2013 election, the NDP’s Robin Austin won by less than 600 votes in Skeena, and by less than 400 votes in 2005, both times edging Liberal candidates.
Austin is not running again, replaced by Bruce Bidgood, a former Terrace city councillor.
Bidgood said there’s little doubt people want good jobs, but he said he believes they also want affordable living in an unspoiled environment.
He said people in the North want projects to meet the same standards that would be expected in the Lower Mainland, noting it was disappointing the aluminum smelter modernization didn’t include scrubbers to reduce sulphur dioxide air pollution.
“We need a government that will entice investment, but also monitor the environment and regulate,” said Bidgood, whose party is promising a revamped environmental assessment and regulatory framework.
Liberal Leader Christy Clark hand-picked the candidate for Skeena, former Haisla Nation chief councillor Ellis Ross, a backer of LNG, although the Haisla were opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Ross said people want sustainable development that protects the environment, but stressed that jobs are important.
“When the industry leaves town, everybody else leaves town,” said Ross.
“If you don’t have a job and you don’t have services, it’s pretty hard to stick around,” he said, noting Kitimat no longer has a movie theatre, for example.
Ross sees opportunity for forestry, while Bidgood said more focus is needed on smaller companies.
There is no Green candidate in Skeena.
Another rural swing riding is Cariboo North.
Liberal Coralee Oakes won the riding in 2013 by just 600 votes, defeating Bob Simpson, now mayor of Quesnel, who ran as an independent.
The riding epitomizes the challenges facing constituencies in the Interior with forestry-based economies.
Quesnel, a community of about 10,000, lost a sawmill in 2013 when Canfor shuttered its operation because of a declining timber supply, a result of the mountain pine beetle epidemic that killed large swaths of lodgepole pine in the Interior.
In 2015, Tolko cut production at its Quesnel mill in half.
The beetle epidemic could ultimately result in more downsizing and the latest softwood lumber trade dispute with the U.S. will create additional hardship.
Simpson says the resource issues facing the community are complex and important; however, people are also concerned with issues of affordability and services.
Unlike in the Lower Mainland, a nice home can be bought for $250,000 and people who still have well-paying industrial or public service jobs are doing fine, he said. But people with lower incomes in service jobs find rent expensive, said Simpson.
“We have no middle economy,” he said. “I do think the key consideration (in the election) will be, ‘How does it feel in my household?’ ”
In Kamloops-North Thompson, which was last held by the NDP in 1991, the proposed $1.3-billion Ajax gold and copper mine promises to create hundreds of construction and long-term jobs.
However, the proximity of the proposed mine to the community, including an elementary school, has made the project controversial, another example of how environmental concerns in resource-based communities can be paramount.
John Schleiermacher of the Kamloops Area Preservation Association, who opposes the Ajax mine, said the community is not anti-development, pointing to its general support of the proposed Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion.
But it’s an issue of the location of the Ajax mine and the mining waste area, which was recently opposed by area First Nations following their own environmental assessment, he said.
“It’s going to be a big part of the election,” said Schleiermacher.