Jack Layton and the federal NDP would be “disastrous” for B.C.'s forestry-dependent communities, Prime Minister Stephen Harper charged today in the Conservatives' strongest attack yet aimed at the NDP leader.
But a Vancouver NDP candidate said Conservative policies are the real disaster for communities that survive on logging.
Layton's proposals to restrict raw timber exports and to break the Tory government's softwood lumber deal with the U.S. would mean trouble for B.C., Harper said.
“The NDP is preying on the obvious troubles that we are all aware of with softwood lumber in forestry communities,” Harper said Wednesday morning at a press conference in Vancouver. “But in fact when you look at what they are advocating, it would actually be terrible for those communities.”
Harper said the Canadian industry has been hurt by the weakened U.S. housing market. “Once the American market turns around, and it will, we will not have access that we will have under the agreement we've signed,” Harper said.
But spurred by polls that suggest the federal NDP is on the rise in B.C. at the expense of the Liberals, Harper also sought to dissuade “strategic voters” from placing their votes with the NDP. He even attempted to draw a distinction between the federal NDP and the Carole James-led provincial party, to which he offered a lukewarm compliment for opposing B.C.'s carbon tax and supporting tough-on-crime measures.
“We know there's a long tradition in B.C. of protest, or opposition voting, but pay careful attention to what these guys are actually advocating,” Harper said. “British Columbia could find itself with a bunch of policies it did not realize it was voting for.”
Vancouver-Centre NDP candidate Michael Byers seemed pleased to hear of Harper's NDP-bashing strategy. “I think it's indicative of the fact that British Columbia is turning into a two-way race between the Conservatives and the New Democrats.”
But the UBC professor and Canada Research Chair in global politics slammed the Tories' plans for the forestry sector. “I've taught international trade for years so I actually have some understanding of the softwood lumber agreement and NAFTA,” Byers said. “Any agreement, especially a bad agreement, can be repudiated or renegotiated.”
It's Conservative policy, Byers said, that's a disaster for B.C.'s forestry communities. “The Harper government with David Emerson … sold out Canadian forestry workers by giving a billion dollars of what was rightfully Canadian money to the United States.
“To suggest that repudiating the agreement would be irresponsible contradicts the gross irresponsibility of Emerson and Stephen Harper by agreeing to that massive giveaway.”
Harper's attacks on the NDP this morning were somewhat of a diversion from his original intention to pledge a crackdown on polluters. The Tories pledged $113 million in funding over five years. It's money, Harper said, that will fund stiffer penalties for serious environmental crimes, increased inspection, specialized environmental prosecutors and a searchable public database for corporations convicted of environmental crimes.
Irwin Loy reports for 24 hours.
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crh
3 years ago
sound bites
the problem with these short sound bites from Harper is that the truth behind them is never debated. How many Canadians know they are voting in the same party whose policies created the mess we are in? It's like asking your murderer to save your life.
Luke Skywalker
3 years ago
Worst Policy Statement of the Campaign
That's Layton's proposal to break the softwood lumber deal with the U.S. Yeah right!
It was time to settle the countervailing duties matter after almost a decade ???? considering the powerful U.S. lumber lobby.
End result: the U.S. returned $5.4 billion it had accumulated in tariffs and interest to Canada and ratained about $1 billion.
And that's corporate boardroom money.
So do the senior federal and provincial mandarins involved. Teaching is one thing but...
Hmmmmmmm ... perhaps when the Cons again form government, Harper should provide full government authority to both Layton and Byers to renegotiate the softwood lumber deal.
Methinks the end result would be a huge mess and they would have to pay the ultimate political price.
The real world is certainly a bit different than the ivory tower world.
clovis
3 years ago
sound bites
I have to agree with crh. The Harper sound bits are just that, small bites with no substantiated substance. It's almost a guarantee that what he says is a distortion of the truth or an outright lie. It's unfortunate that most folks seem to take the rhetoric at face value and not check facts. This is a point that Harper is aware of and seems to be using to his advantage. We really need to convince everyone to take the time and search for the truth instead of taking the spoon feeding at face value.
Frank
3 years ago
Done Like Dion
I thought it was when Dion claimed that Green Shift thing wasn't a big Liberal platform plank. That the media had it all wrong.
My runner-up is Harper declaring the Cdn economy is strong, sound, perfect. Kinda sounds like the words of a certain Treasury Secretary named "Paulsen" down south. Turns out he was talking about someone else's economy, maybe Harper is too.
Skywalker
3 years ago
Good idea Jack.
The soft wood lumber deal was a sellout of BC's interests from the beginning. Any thorough study of it shows that very clearly. We got hosed big time.
Van Isle
3 years ago
If the soft wood agreement
If the soft wood agreement was such a wonderful deal, how come the lumber industry is in such a mess? The only sawmills here on the Island that are working are the small and gypo outfits for the local market. Oh, they're knocking down trees and hauling logs as fast as they can (7 days a week); go up any mountain here on the coast and the panoramic vistas that one sees, mile after mile, is fresh clearcuts. The lumber market boneheads think that the only market to sell their product is to the US. They should get off their sorry butts and go and flog the stuff to other parts of the world. We hardly sell any lumber products to Europe anymore.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
The Reform Party, or
The Reform Party, or whatever they call themselves at this time, is in psychological warfare with the Canadian public, the phoniest part being the selling of corporate raider Harper as a warm hearted human being, with a pussycat on his lap.
The know they can't win on their sordid record and planned policies, so they're working on the "personality cult" racket.
The BC forest industry was given a deadly blow by the Campbell Reform Party, when they abolished the local processing laws.
There were hundreds of independent mills around the province 30 years ago, employing several times the present numbers and paying decent wages, and no raw logs were exported in any numbers.
Now we have a province wide control and communistic economic collectivization by a half dozen mega corporations, who are wiping out communities and ruininig the lives of thousands, as well as the ecology, with their raw log exports growing by the day, enforced and unstoppable by NAFTA and WTO rules, as long as we subject ourselves to their crime wave. .
Harper's defence of this racket is typical of the sick ideologies and economic theories forced on us by his corporate bosses, working on the sale of Canada to the USA and the EU. In secret negotiations, of course, while stroking his pussy.
On our way to town, yesterday, we saw a large sign with the photo of our perennial Reform hack Dick Harris, with "Member of Parliament" below it.
This is another highly illegal form of psychological, personality cult, warfare to entrench the guy's name in people's minds, as he's no longer and MP, or holds any office.
So, please look out for similar gimmicks in your ridings and report them to Elections Canada .
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
Luke Skywalker
3 years ago
It's About the LESSER of Two Evils....
"It's a bad deal. I wish it would go away. But I am worried about what would happen if we unilaterally scrapped it," said Russ Cameron, of the Independent Lumber Remanufacturers Association.
Cameron noted that in 1991 Canada unilaterally ended a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. on softwood lumber and the U.S. government immediately responded by initiating damaging tariffs.
"They didn't even wait for the U.S. lumber interests to file a petition," he said.
The same thing would most likely happen again, Cameron said.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=89467b06-4eb4-4f45-80c2-0f350049303f