Premier Christy Clark kicked off on Monday a weeklong rollout of her long-promised jobs agenda, putting the early brush strokes on a plan she said will be the hallmark of her time in office.
“Defending and creating jobs is the primary mission of my government,” she said during a morning speech in Prince Rupert.
“It will be my primary mission until I finish this job as premier.”
Clark said she will not release the full plan — entitled Canada Starts Here: The BC Jobs Plan — until a Thursday speech in Vancouver, a timetable that gives her three days to make regional job-related announcements around the province.
On Monday, that schedule took Clark to the northwest, where she promised $15 million toward a $90-million rail corridor at the Ridley Island terminal in Prince Rupert.
Part of a larger planned port development, the project is expected to increase the port’s capacity to move resources such as coal and potash from B.C. to overseas Asian markets.
Later in the day, Clark was in Kitimat, promising to take measures that would pave the way for the creation of up to three new massive liquefied natural gas plants in B.C. by 2020.
“We want to create a new industry with the capacity to export B.C.’s liquefied natural gas,” Clark said, adding she wants to see the $4.5- billion Kitimat LNG terminal — plus a related $1.2-billion pipeline — in operation by 2015.
“It’s an ambitious goal,” she said, promising “aggressive” measures to open up the LNG industry.
“But we have to be ambitious for British Columbia, and we have to be optimistic about what the future holds.”
Clark’s proposals to spur LNG investment included promises to improve skills training, to beef up international marketing and a move to accelerate the lengthy government permitting process.
Today, Clark will be at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, where she is expected to highlight the importance of international education. Thompson Rivers attracts about 2,000 international students each year, and the government estimates each one brings about $30,000 of economic activity into the province each year.
Clark will be in Surrey on Wednesday, where she will speak at a Surrey Board of Trade breakfast sponsored by Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
Following her marquee speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade on Thursday, Clark will cap the week on Friday with an appearance at a forum entitled Realizing Canada’s Pacific Opportunity. At this event, which is sponsored by the B.C. Business Council, Clark is expected to highlight a review of the province’s overseas marketing efforts.
The week of announcements — and especially Thursday’s speech —is a high-stakes point in Clark’s career. She recently marked six months in office, and has been under increasing criticism over what opponents are calling her lack of a substantive agenda.
The week is also an opportunity for the new premier, who recently backed away from calling an early election, to put her full efforts behind her plan to defend and create jobs.
New Democratic Party MLA Carole James criticized Clark’s announcement, saying it is similar to a Pacific Gateway strategy announced by former premier Gordon Campbell in 2006.
“It’s been months where she had the opportunity to bring forward a plan. It’s been months of the public waiting for her to actually put something on the table, and today to see that it’s more slogans and funding an old announcement from 2006 – the public expected better.”
James said a successful jobs plan should involve major investments in post-secondary education and training.
James also said the government could spur investments in the green economy by committing some revenues from the province’s carbon tax.
On Monday, Clark said her plan is based on three main pillars: expanding markets for B.C. products, particularly in Asia; strengthening B.C.’s infrastructure to help get goods to market; and working with employers and communities to ensure government is not standing in the way of investment and job creation.
She said for these pillars to be successful, they must rest on a strong foundation.
“You can’t have stable pillars without a strong foundation and we need a skilled workforce to be able to support that,” said Clark, not going into detail about what her plan has to offer on education and training.
Clark also spoke about the importance of maintaining fiscal credentials such as a triple-A credit rating and a manageable debt-to-GDP ratio.
“We also have to make sure we preserve British Columbia’s reputation as a sound stable place for investment,” she said.
“We need to send a message to the world, to investors, that if you invest in British Columbia, if you invest in jobs in our province, you will get a return on your investment.”
Clark is expected to set out some targets for her jobs plan during her speech Thursday — ones that could help to make or break her political fortunes depending on the economic outlook at the time of B.C.’s next election in May 2013,
Last Friday, Clark’s minister in charge of the plan, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation Pat Bell, sought to play down expectations it would spark immediate employment.
“It’s not going to be 20,000 jobs or 30,000 jobs created in the next four months,” Bell said in an interview.
“It takes time to implement, it takes time to deliver, but I think a year and a half from now people will be able to look back and say we’re starting to see some real results.”
The plan comes at a time when many world economies are facing the prospect of a double-dip recession, and as global commodity markets are softening.
It also comes as the province is predicting slow economic growth for 2011, and an unemployment rate of about 7.8 per cent.
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