Dear Sir:
Skeena NDP MLA Robin Austin’s so-called article about the Liberals and B.C.’s forests strategy in the Sept. 21 issue of The Terrace Standard is not an article at all.
It is an opposition party member’s self-serving attempt to blame the government for everything that goes wrong.
It is typical of opposition parties everywhere to blame the government for changes in world economy that negatively affect the local jurisdiction.
The trick is to wait a few years, hoping that voters will forget the details, then point fingers at the government complaining that things aren’t as good as they were before. In this case, Mr. Austin conveniently ignores the fact that it was the excessive U.S. duties on B.C. softwood lumber that killed the market and decimated B.C.’s forest industry, thus forcing the Liberal government to allow whole log exports just to keep the forest industry from total collapse.
This was despite years of negotiations by B.C. and federal officials with the U.S.
Well, too bad, Mr. Austin. We haven’t forgotten and we know full well that the NDP could not have done any better.
What is the point of producing lumber for which there is no market? Is that the NDP solution to everything?
Dan Wiley,
Terrace, B.C.
(Editor’s note: Mr. Austin’s submission was published as a column.)