Premier Christy Clark talked about resource development during her tour of the Northwest and said that developing the regional ports would be a part of that strategy.
“China wants our lumber, and what we’re trying to do is open up the market in China for wood frame housing and wood frame commercial buildings,” she said.
She said that she’d ideally like to see every log harvested in B.C. processed here, but she admits that isn’t always possible, particularly since raw logs come off private land which the government wouldn’t have control over.
But there is room for government involvement in opening up the Asian markets, particularly in the area ports.
“We are going to be investing a lot of resources into trying to make sure that we expand Prince Rupert and make sure that Kitimat has what it needs, for [liquid natural gas],” she said.
“We’re going to be investing a lot of money in expanding our ports.”
She said that it’s important for the government to get out of the way of economic growth — essentially letting the market and industry get the products out of the ground without too much interference — but developing ports is a way they can still be involved.
“We can get out of the way of economic growth here and hopefully people will start extracting more resources and creating more wealth, but we have to be able to enable it getting to market, so if Rupert is a bottleneck, we have to clear that up.”
Clark toured the area, stopping in Terrace and Smithers before heading back south.
~By Cameron Orr