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By Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Peter Milobar

Sound Off

SOUND OFF: NDP’s CleanBC plan fails economy and environment

Nov 23, 2023 | 10:30 AM

MOST BRITISH COLUMBIANS AGREE they want a province with a thriving, growing economy, and a government with a plan to address climate change and its impacts.

In Kamloops, we’ve seen firsthand the devastation of climate-related disasters and we don’t want to watch them continue to get worse. But we also know the importance of industry — how vital it is to ensure people have good, family-supporting jobs, and an economy that continues to grow, sustaining a flourishing private sector that in turn, sustains British Columbians.

These ideas do not have to exist in opposition to one another. However right now, the NDP government’s so-called CleanBC climate plan is accomplishing neither of these goals.

Based on the government’s own documents, this ‘CostBC’ scheme will see household incomes plummet by $11,000 annually. It will result in the loss of more than 200,000 jobs and lead to nearly $3 billion in revenue lost for health care and other critical services.

Experts even predict that CleanBC will roll back B.C.’s economic prosperity by a decade, reducing the GDP by $28 billion by 2030 and slowing economic growth to an average annual rate of just 0.4 per cent.

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These are alarming figures. With an affordability crisis as serious as the one B.C. now faces, what family could handle losing $11,000 in income? The NDP’s ‘CostBC’ scheme simply doesn’t serve the people of our province.

For everything that David Eby and his government are sacrificing for this plan, you’d hope that it was at least delivering results on climate and lowering emissions. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Seven years in, not a single emissions target set by this NDP government has been met. In 2021, B.C. even saw emissions increase.

Eby is risking the future economic prosperity of our province for a plan that does not even deliver on its reported goals. Meanwhile, the NDP is spending millions of taxpayer dollars on misleading ads for CleanBC. How is this climate action?

On the other hand, the misguided BC Conservatives have announced they will scrap this plan and replace it with no alternative, failing to grow the economy and leaving people across the province to deal with devastating and worsening fires, floods and disasters every year.

Only BC United, under the leadership of Kevin Falcon, has a plan that doesn’t make British Columbians choose between a thriving economy and sensible climate policy. BC United is committed to scraping the NDP’s destructive CleanBC plan and replacing it with a common sense alternative that focuses on reducing global emissions while creating jobs, increasing incomes, and lowering taxes.

We will expand opportunities to get B.C. LNG to market, displacing reliance on dirty coal abroad, reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and improving our economy at home. We’ll invest in climate-resilient infrastructure to create jobs and economic growth while building resilient reservoirs, durable dykes and other key climate adaptation infrastructure. And we’ll hit wildfires hard and fast with a modernized and overhauled wildfire service to significantly reduce our largest source of carbon emissions — which in some seasons have exceeded 300 per cent of B.C.’s annual emissions.

It’s clear that the NDP has a bad plan and the BC Conservatives have no plan — but BC United has a better plan. We know that people don’t want to choose between the environment and the economy, and under Kevin Falcon, they won’t have to.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.