TWO STRONG campaign themes are starting to emerge as Skeena New Democrats and their BC Liberal opponents begin gearing up for the provincial election to be held May 9.
Voting day may be months away but now that the New Democrats have chosen UNBC professor and former Terrace city councillor Bruce Bidgood as their candidate, they can now move ahead to counter former Haisla chief councillor Ellis Ross, who was hand-picked by Premier Christy Clark as the BC Liberal candidate last fall.
It’s Clark’s appointment of Ross that drew pointed comments at the NDP nomination meeting Jan. 14, when more than 250 party members filled the banquet room at the Best Western.
Those members were reminded several times that while they had a choice of four people who wanted to be their candidate, Ross was chosen by someone from the outside, chiefly the premier.
Those remarks began with Skeena – Bulkley Valley NDP MP Nathan Cullen who was asked to speak while the nominating ballots were being counted.
Cullen noted that no one from the outside presented a candidate to New Democrats as a done deal.
“Never mind your personal thoughts,” Cullen said, imagining what remarks Clark might have made. “I will choose for you.”
Cullen said voting on a candidate may seem like a small thing, but it happens in all parties all over B.C., except with a few candidates.
That emphasizes the significance of Clark’s appointment of Ross, he noted.
“If anyone didn’t get the subtle hint, if you’re drawing a map, an electoral map of British Columbia, there’s a bull’s eye on this part of the world. Obviously the premier and the Liberals have decided this [riding] is theirs for the taking.”
New Democrats should welcome that challenge, Cullen added, because it makes the area and its people relevant.
“This is nice, actually. This is what you want to be. Which is what you are which is relevant.”
“The worst thing in politics is to be taken for granted,” Cullen said.
He spoke for more than an hour while the votes on NDP nominees were being counted and as party members and others waited to hear the name of the winning candidate.
After Cullen had all but exhausted his supply of political anecdotes, bridging the rest of the gap was left to Rob Goffinet, a retired Kitimat school teacher and current Kitimat municipal councillor, who holds a position within the Skeena New Democratic constituency association.
He picked up and continued Cullen’s theme, saying that Christy Clark “selected a person (and the local Liberals) were then told who that person will be.”
Goffinet combined that with a pitch for donations for the coming NDP campaign, noting that the Liberal effort will be well-financed.
“Where do you think that money is coming from? Other parts of the world,” he guessed about Liberal support. “Money will come into this riding.”
Regardless of the NDP emphasis on the appointment of Ross by Clark, the BC Liberal candidate has been staking out his own campaign ground.
During his tenure as Haisla chief councillor, Ross positioned the Haisla well during the years of intense liquefied natural gas (LNG) development speculation.
On two proposed LNG projects, the Haisla stood to gain from jobs, tax revenues, business contracts and, in the case of the Douglas Channel LNG, an ownership position as well.
“We looked at the safety record of natural gas transport,” Ross said in an interview in 2012, just as the LNG speculation tide began to roll over the northwest.
“If there is a spill, knock on wood, the impact is different from crude oil. Combine that with the safety record and it was a mitigated risk the Haisla was willing to take.”
During speeches and interviews Ross also make a strong point of saying that responsible development is the tide that raises all boats in the region, not just the Haisla and First Nations.
In contrast, Ross and the Haisla were dead set against Enbridge’s Northern Gateway plan.
Like LNG, Enbridge held out the promise of jobs and business development but the risk of a spill, for instance, was too much.
“There’s no real way to pick this product up out of a marine environment,” Ross said in a 2013 interview.
“If they can prove that, then show us where this is being practised around the world,” he said as a challenge to Enbridge when the company was required to implement a spill cleanup plan for Northern Gateway, as part of getting conditional federal approval.
“I’m just not willing to put the Haisla in that position,” Ross said.
However, while that may have been a position of Ross then about carrying crude to the coast for export, that may have changed, since he stands in favour of oil refinery plans near Kitimat.
Both proposals, Pacific Future Energy and Kitimat Clean, tout using green standard technology.
Both, just as with the now quiet LNG proposals, offer employment, a key point in the Ross campaign.
“Standards for refining are higher in Canada than many other places in the world, plus the opportunity to upgrade heavy oil into value-added products right here provides good-paying jobs and contracts for British Columbians,” said Ross in a Jan. 9 statement.
“And imagine the benefits that would come from the tax revenue these projects would pay to government, that in turn can be used to provide more services.”
It’s a message Ross will take out on the campaign trail and, as one of Clark’s star candidates in the upcoming campaign, more than likely its one he’ll deliver around the province.