The all-candidates meetings moved up the Coast on April 26 to Pender Harbour Community Hall where the three main contenders for the Powell River-Sunshine Coast riding answered select questions from the 100 or so residents in attendance.
The meeting was put on by the Pender Harbour Advisory Council (PHAC) and moderated by Alan Stewart. Present were incumbent MLA Nicholas Simons, Green Party candidate Kim Darwin and the Liberals’ Mathew Wilson. Cascadia Party candidate Reuben Richards was not in attendance.
Economic development
The first question of the night – on economic development – came from Leonard Lee, who is involved with several Pender Harbour organizations including the PHAC. Lee’s question covered jobs lost due to automation and the issue of attracting and keeping young people on the Coast, specifically in Pender Harbour.
“When it comes to automation,” Darwin said, “it’s not just logging that this is happening to, it’s going to happen to a number of jobs throughout B.C., throughout Canada, throughout the world. The BC Green Party is planning for this… Part of our economic platform is merging to a living wage. That’s where the companies that have automation would be taxed to a certain degree so that money would go to a living wage.”
Simons stressed the importance of creating conditions in the community that are favourable to young people.
“We need to take action to ensure that there is affordable housing in all our communities,” Simons said. “We need to make sure that if and when those jobs come up that there are places for these people to live. The government’s responsibility … is not to be the job creators… We need to create the conditions in which businesses will thrive, in which communities will be successful and healthy.”
Wilson said the current BC Liberal government has already taken steps to creating conditions that would allow small communities to prosper.
“We have done that – it is the government’s job to do that,” Wilson said. “But it is your MLA’s job to ensure that those funds put forth by the province come into our riding. If your MLA isn’t out there every day trying to ensure that the funding that is available provincially is coming here to support this community, it will not. It will go somewhere else.”
Dock management
Sean McAllister – a member of the Dock Man-agement Working Group – asked the candidates about resolving the 14-year-old and ongoing moratorium on dock applications in Pender Harbour, while involving residents in the decision-making process.
Simons spoke first on the issue and said he was as blindsided by the Dock Management Plan as everyone else had been.
“This is a perfect example of absolutely, wilfully neglectful consultation process that pits two communities against each other,” Simons said.
“Because of my relationship with the First Nations I believe we can have a discussion where feelings won’t be hurt, where issues will be put on the table, where solutions will be proposed and we can actually come to an agreement. Because I agree, it’s in everybody’s best interests to have some certainty over this issue; 14 years is far too long.”
Wilson said that having grown up in Pender Harbour, it was clear to him how necessary it is to have access to the ocean and how intrinsic it is as part of the culture of the community.
“You need someone who’s going to bring the parties together,” Wilson said, “who’s going to bring the communities together – engage the community – go out there and have town hall meetings regularly, ensuring that the parties are at the table, putting those reports in front of you, saying this is where the ecological issues are, this is where the archeological issues are. How to mitigate that, how do we resolve that, how do we get through that, ensuring that the shíshálh are at the table? I’ve already met with the chief and he’s willing to work with this community. To me that is a step in the right direction.”
Darwin also invoked her amicable relation with Sechelt Indian Band (SIB) Chief Warren Paull, but said that in this case the government should take a step back.
“I really believe – in this instance – that the government needs to sit out for a little bit,” Darwin said. “The community needs to come together with the shíshálh First Nations and this community… We’re too small of a community to have this kind of a divide. It does more than just hurt feelings; it hurts businesses.
“Somehow or another we’ve forgotten that it’s the government’s job to listen to the community instead of having these top-down decisions,” Darwin said. “It really is supposed to be that way and we need to get back to that.”
First Nations
A question later in the meeting brought up the Pender Harbour Indian Band. “The government and the SIB deny the local Pender Harbour Indian Band and they have been shut out,” Stewart said. “The question to you is, why?”
The three candidates remained somewhat tight-lipped on this issue, but all agreed it was a complicated matter without an easy fix. Wilson said that there is an existing legal framework for determining the validity of a claim such as this one. Darwin said it was an issue that would need to be worked on, and that she will support the Indian bands as they do so. Simons said he would prefer to “leave it as an issue between the shíshálh and the Pender Harbour folks.”
“I know it would be inappropriate for me to step in and decide what I think should happen,” Simons said. “As Darwin mentioned, we do need to engage in respectful dialogue. That is something the First Nations are going to need to resolve and we encourage that resolution.”
Pender Harbour roads
The subject of roads in Pender Harbour came up near the end of the night. All of the candidates agreed that the roads are an issue that needs attention.
Simons said that he has identified roads in Pender Harbour and Powell River as priorities to the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
“There are certain places here where there have been some improvements but I don’t think anywhere near the kind of investment that’s necessary,” Simons said. “I look forward to a less hostile government, one that will listen to the local representatives… We’ve made big commitments to improving infrastructure in this province, we see that as a good stimulus for the economy of this province. Roads are a central part of that commitment.”
“I’m not going to blame a government because I can’t deliver,” Wilson said. “I’m going to go up there and make sure that the funding that’s in the regional budget for highways is here. The $4 million for Lund highway that’s sitting in Vancouver, bring it here. The $2 million that we need to fix the road up by Middlepoint to put the barriers in place and protect people from falling off that embankment. I’m going to ensure that it’s here.”
Darwin agreed that the roads are in need of repairs, but used the issue to make a bigger point.
“The one thing I can do with the BC Green Party, as your MLA, is to cross party lines and work and negotiate with both parties,” Darwin said. “What we’ve seen over the last 16 years is the Liberals and NDP sitting in the legislature just fighting.
“We need to get rid of majority governments, is what I believe,” Darwin added. “The way that the NDPs and the Liberals are polling right now – if they get an equal number of seats – we only need two to four Green MLAs. They will both have to come to us to get every bill passed. Then we can weave in social programs, we can weave in environmental programs. We can weave in things to get funding for our roads.”
