PREMIER CHRISTY Clark promised this morning that a re-elected BC Liberal government would create a program providing local governments with tax money from resource industries so they can better cope with their impact.
Speaking in Terrace before heading to Prince Rupert, Clark said smaller municipalities will be under pressure to provide roads and other infrastructure as people move in to take advantage of resource industry employment.
"You're going to pay a little bit of a price," Clark told a crowd at local BC Liberal candidate Carol Leclerc's headquarters.
By providing money, Clark said her government would recognize the cost of dealing with growing populations and associated demand.
Just as important, she said, was the idea of keeping some money where it is generated.
The province already has a program in northeastern B.C. whereby local governments receive money each year taken from natural gas and oil royalties.
A similar program for the northwest would have to be tailored for regional needs, Clark told reporters afterward.
"We would have to work out a fair return for those communities," she said.
Clark said the money would come out of another BC Liberal campaign promise, a prosperity fund financed by tax revenues from liquefied natural gas exports which could amount to as much as $100 billion.
"We just don't want to come and take. We want to build communities," Clark added.
Still to be decided are details such as what is a rural community and what is not and what communities will qualify based on impacts to them, said the premier.
"I'm sure Vancouver will probably try and make an argument," she said.
Clark framed her rural dividend program around the promise of a substantial liquefied natural gas export industry.
But the northwest is also set to benefit from the construction of BC Hydro's Northwest Transmission Line.
One mine, the Red Chris copper and gold mine owned by Imperial Metals, is already under construction and is scheduled to be the transmission line's first customer beginning next year.