With local elections over, it’s time to talk about the provincial ones coming up on Saturday.
Each of the Skeena’s candidates shared their visions for the riding’s future at last week’s forum in Terrace.
For Conservative incumbent Claire Rattee, the region’s biggest issue is mental health and addictions supports.
She says her party would add more youth detox and treatment beds, plus services to bridge the gap between them and prevent relapses.
OneBC’s Larry Taylor wants to tackle affordability by incentivizing local food producers and farms to reduce grocery costs.
He also says improving roads to make repairs less expensive for truckers, and returning freight to the airport would both pass savings to the public.
NDP candidate Sarah Zimmerman plans to cap grocery and fuel costs and continuing to freeze insurance rates.
She also says getting an extension to the Northwest Resource Benefits Alliance will help balance industrial taxation, especially for Terrace.
Green candidate Nick Gottlieb, meanwhile, says we need to break the reliance on raw resource extraction, and diversify and tax industry more.
His party also wants a wealth tax, only on sitting wealth, rather than income, impacting only about 2,000 people.
We’ll be hitting the polls again this Saturday to pick one of them as the next Skeena MLA.
UBCIC Grand Chief Stewart Phillip endorses NDP after Green confusion
One election is in the books, but we’ve still got the provincial one coming up this weekend.
And Union of BC Indian Chiefs Grand Chief Stewart Phillip is endorsing the NDP and leader David Eby.
It follows some confusion after he said he supported Green leader Emily Lowan, which Phillip clarified was only for her riding.
He says she has earned his respect and admiration, but that Eby is the best choice to lead BC.
Phillip also called the Conservatives a “deeply divided, dated and bitter schmozzle of candidates”.
