Apparently the truth is not a necessary component when claiming someone else is “mutilating the truth.”
In an attempt to smear the BC Green Caucus for standing up for what is in the interest of British Columbia, Resource Works has published a blog post about a question I asked in Question Period on Monday April 23, 2018.
In the process, they let down the very people they claim to stand up for.
All week, I and my colleagues have asked questions about the race-to-the-bottom economics of the provincial and federal governments which has gutted jobs in rural and coastal communities. We highlight the need to diversify our provincial economy and add value to raw materials to create jobs that were killed by the previous BC Liberal government.
In my question on Monday, I referred to Canada and British Columbia as acting like a “resource colony.”
Well, Resource Works published their post suggesting we “mutilate the truth” and in the process mutilate it a little themselves.
It is not funny. This is a very serious matter!
My comments about “acting like a resource colony” is not an attack on resource jobs or resource economies.
Our work in the Legislature was the furthest thing from an attack on resource communities.
In fact, we were standing up for them. We were highlighting the gutting of rural and coastal communities in fishing, mining, forestry, mills, canneries and the list goes on.
My reference to “resource colony” hails back to the days of the Hudson Bay Company and the fur trade. Where the “hewers of wood and drawers of water” supplied raw materials for the Crown and we did not see ourselves as much more than that. We certainly did not see ourselves as refiners and processors.
Well, there was a time, between then and now, when the provincial economy was diversified and we refined raw materials, added value and the extractors produced well-paying, family-supporting jobs for British Columbians.
Not any longer!
Now the logs are shipped raw, the bitumen is shipped raw, and fish quotas are being processed in China.
We are standing up for resource dependant communities and it is Resource Works that is promoting bottom-of-the-barrel economics. It is appalling that they would use such tactics to raise a few dollars to promote the further degradation of rural and coastal communities.
Here are the videos of our work this week. Let me know what you think!
there is nothing wrong with referring to so-called ‘bc’ as a resource colony since not much has changed in 150 years…the exploitation of the waters, the land, the trees, the inhabitants continues unabated to the brink of biotic collapse and the extinction of all life on this planet…’business-as-usual’ will kill us all