NDP Unveil PG-Valemount Candidate
Prince George, B.C. – An NDP candidate has stepped forward in Prince George-Valemount.
As 250News reported Saturday, Natalie Fletcher will be acclaimed at a nomination meeting scheduled for March 11.
Fletcher, a 30-year resident of Prince George, is no stranger to politics having been involved in local, provincial and national campaigns in the past.
“I’m running as a candidate for the BC NDP because I feel I need to step forward and lead the change I want to see. I am tired of seeing British Columbians work harder only to get further behind. We simply can not afford another four years of the BC Liberals.”
Fletcher says she has a solid understanding of the issues facing British Columbians through her work in health care and from running a small business.
She says education, health care and good jobs are the top priorities facing the province.
The only other publicly declared candidate in the riding is current Liberal MLA and Jobs Minister Shirley Bond.
Comments
Congrats on your win Shirley.
Yes, it is very likely that both Shirley and Mike Morris will win. I can say with great certainty, that they will make more than adequate “opposition” MLAs for this area, much like our MPs; Doherty and Zimmer.
Imagine that, all four (4) government representatives, at the Federal and Provincial levels, being members of the opposition… now what would that say about how out of step with the rest of the country and province we are?
I guess this tends happen when 30,000 plus PG citizens spend too much time on a facebook site that does nothing but post and paint rosy pictures of our area, yet ignores the growing ugly reality; things are not so great in PG and the region.
let me guess your a NDP’r who keeps dreaming of a socialist community. Ask the average family how they are doing in Alberta, with their government elected.
Yes. it is going to take a while to undo over 40 years of Conservative government screw-ups in Alberta before the NDP is able to turn that province around. The same goes for this province, the situation so dire, it will take a while for the NDP to turn this province around, after 16 years of BC Liberal mismanagement.
yes, pretty much bought and paid for.
Thanks for stepping up Natalie!
5 years PG hospital has been planning for the our hospital to be the “priority” that Shirley Bond and Christy were peddling last election and now Bond is saying we have to be more aggressive? Why? Because she will not fight for us – we receive nothing while she props up a women who can’t tell the truth!
We need a new and progressive voices for the working people of Prince George – not more of the same old, tired, no plan people who show up for the photo-ops.
I appreciate Natalie’s commitment to the north but it will be very hard to unseat Shirley Bond. You can say what you want in regards to the provincial government but Shirley has bust her butt for this area. She is one of the hardest working MLA’s in the province.
Perhaps you could explain to us how you were able to determine that somehow Shirley works harder than other MP’s in BC. I suggest that you have no evidence to support your claim.
She was re-elected for a fourth term as MLA for the Prince George-Valemount riding in 2013 and was appointed Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training and Minister responsible for Labour on June 10, 2013. Bond previously served as:
Minister of Justice
Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure
Minister of Education and Minister Responsible for Early Learning and Literacy
Deputy Premier
Minister of Advanced Education and
Minister of Health Services.
She also served as vice-chair of the Treasury Board, chaired the Cabinet Committee on New Relationship Coordination, and sat as a member of the cabinet climate action committee. Before being elected to the legislative assembly, she served three terms on the Prince George school board. I would say that she has been pretty involved in this town for a very long time. She was getting cabinet posts when traditionally posts were only given to people south of Hope or on the Island.
Doing what? How have we benefited? I moved here 12 years ago and the population has stayed the same, unemployment is high, poverty has grown.
Shirley works hard at attending all the photo-ops, charity dinners and getting elected over and over because she’s well known. Personally tired of the same-old same-old no plan Liberals and their leader who lies.
I moved here 40 years ago and the population has stayed the same, unemployment has been high, poverty has grown
I was here for the Socreds, the NDP, and the Liberals and suffice as to say the 10 years with the NDP was the worst poverty stricken, high unemployment, people moving away time we have had in the city. When I came here the library was a brand new state of the art building, I have lived through it all in PG and have to say have never, ever done as well as today. We do not need an NDP government, Rhino party would be a step up from them
slinky’s comment is the most quintessential opinion based comment ever, and here are the two dead give aways for my saying so;
1. Every sentence in slinky’s comment is a personal opinion, because they contain the word “I”;
2. slinky’s comment contains no sourced reference to facts or truths that could even remotely back up his fantasy claims about the NDP.
If anyone wants, I could counter every single one of slinky’s “false” claims about the NDP with referenced sources that dispels his lies with proof and facts.
The only thing that gives power to the Christy Clark government is their ability to generate “fear and doubt” about the NDP, re-read slinky’s comment and ask yourself, what is his comment meant to generate?
This all they have folks, they don’t have an upstanding 16 year record they can point to and bang their drums on… so they resort to fear and doubt about the opposition! How sad really…
And what are the options? Please enlighten me with your wisdom and tell me who else is going to do more for the area?
Who will do more for the area, you ask? Why most certainly an NDP representative and an NDP government. The facts are; under Shirley, and the Christy Clark government, BC has lost approximately 30,000 forestry jobs, mills have closed and so have mines in the area.
On the other hand, the NDP have a proven track record of creating jobs!
ht tp://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/archive/budget97/bcleads.gif
No false claims, was here in the city the whole time. Watched a lot of people leave, good people, working people, business owners, all headed east. Some to Ontario, some Alberta. Almost went myself, the only time I was facing a layoff in my entire working life was in the 90s. Had the bags proverbially packed as we waited for the 2000 election results. Went to forestry conferences in Victoria where NDP MPs would ignore invites and listened to speeches by Greens and Liberals tell us about getting rid of the Forest Practices Code, just give us some time. Maybe you can get rid of me this time BH, I tell ya if I leave I won’t feel the need to look up local news.
You can post how rosy it was in the 90s all you like but unless you actually lived it all the charts and graphs mean nothing. It was worse than the recession of 1981 by a long shot, and we weren’t in recession. Being the bottom of the provinces in Canada was absolutely atrocious. It is not an issue when the rest of Canada is in recession for things to be slow but when Canada is booming and we are coming to the table with a cup in hand things are bad.
Oh and BH maybe stick to your own advice and stay off other people’s comments. My reply was to Annie Martin who posted oodles of links to back up her facts
You spout about child poverty yet the NDP cut rates for welfare recipients and forced single mothers with children over 12 to work. In the 90s the amount of welfare recipients were over 10 percent of the total population causing the famous Premier’s line of “vagrants” and “deadbeats” flooding into BC. The only influx of people to BC were immigrants and welfare cheats according to the NDP, there was a net emigration if you took out the immigration numbers from Vancouver in the 90s. You won’t post any links about those as, hey, they don’t paint such a rosy picture of conditions in BC during the NDP. All above is easily verifiable through any search engine, being as it was such a long time ago most of the articles are now archived PDF and the like not shiny headlines.
People flooded into BC during the 1990’s because the NDP created a massive amount of new jobs being, how else can you explain it, and how else can you explain this?
ht tp://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/archive/budget97/bcleads.gif
The “evidence” does not lie like the Lieberals often do.
Hard to lose 30,000 forestry jobs in an industry that has 20,000 workers
According to Stats Canada in 1995 the logging and forest industry in BC had 28,500 employees, 1997 the logging and forest industry had 20,600 employees. My the increase in jobs just brought them in to the province by the bucket load.
According to a 2015 Council of Forest Industries (COFI) BC Forest Industry
Economic Impact Study; “The industry consists of six main sectors: primary manufacturing, forest management, secondary manufacturing, fibre supply and wholesale, forest innovation, and silviculture.”
“Total employment was 145,800 FTEs. Of this, almost 63,500 FTEs were within the industry, while an additional 82,300 FTEs were though linkages with other industries.”
145,000 Full Time Equivalent jobs is the actual number slinky, might want to brush up on your research skills, as your quoted numbers are no where close.
Since 2006, the BC forest industry has lost 27% of it’s FTE jobs!
Might want to brush up on your forestry knowledge. When you make blanket statements like “forestry jobs” and want to include the secretary who answers the phone then maybe. Stats Canada records those working in the logging and forest industry in BC – of which between 1995 and 1997 they lost 8,000 logging and forestry jobs and how many spin off jobs did they lose? Oh right that was during the NDP reign when there were no job losses according to your “research”
The Council of Forest Industries knows their stuff when it comes to employment numbers in their own industry slinky. Got to hand it to you slinky, every time I kick you a$$, you keep coming back for more.
It’s not good for your reputation on here, being so far off about forest industry employment numbers, 20,000 was not even close… kind of embarrassingly wrong of you, but then again what can we expect from a Liberal? After all the BC Liberal Government has no idea what our forest inventory is, and has no idea how to manage it, this according to the BC Forest Practices Board.
So far the only one that has had anything concrete to offer PG and area is Green Party leader Andrew J. Weaver MLA . For only six million dollars worth of high tech infrastructure he would have PG and area on a level playing field with 604 . I hope MS fletcher is bright enough to listen to our very own Nobel laureate. Doesn’t seem like the rest of them do or they are satisfied with water , wood , and gas unlike Weaver .
What a laugh! The only thing Weaver offers is pipe dreams.
“She says education, health care and good jobs are the top priorities facing the province.”
————————————————————————-
She’s wrong. The top priority facing the Province is why our ever rising cost of living continually exceeds our standard of living. Both, for most people, (though not for an ever greater minority), are increasing. But the gap between the two grows ever wider and ever faster.
“Good jobs”, in the sense that they pay ‘good incomes’, are declining. They have been for a very long time, and the rate of decline is accelerating. They are continually being displaced by automation and technology. And while these things in themselves do create some “good jobs”, they don’t do so to the full extent of those lost. Nor are they ever going to. The day of the ‘job’ being the sole, or even main, source of incomes is coming to an end. If the futurists are right, over 50% of jobs in existence right now are going to disappear in the decades ahead.
Is there any conception of what this means in the ranks of the NDP? Or even the BC Liberals? It is the TOP PRIORITY both should be looking at. But are they? Or will they? Or do we just get more pretense instead, that if one or the other are elected they’ll make everything right again? How long will it be before WE wake up? Start to ask “WHY?” in an age of ever increasing physical plenty we labor under a set up that’s leading to increased financial poverty enforced one way or the other on us ALL?
Well good for you Natalie. I don’t share your politics but it takes guts to run against a high profile candidate knowing you most certainly will lose. But I detest coronations so it’s good someone is willing to run for the other side. And, after what happened in Alberta and the U.S., I don’t think there are any slam dunks anymore. In any event, in campaigning you can express your message who knows what’ll happen. And for what it’s worth, try telling us what the NDP will do, vs what the Liberals have or haven’t done. I already know that story.
And BH, those 30,000 forestry jobs – got some thoughts for you.
The Pulp and Paper industry has shrunk because – well, guess what, few people read physical newspapers anymore. The papermill in Mackenzie made paper for guess who – Playboy and other glossy magazine types. That type of literature apparently is obtainable electronically now – so I hear.
I guess that’s the Liberals fault for inventing the Internet.
The actual timber supply has decreased, forcing mills to close. I suppose the Liberals are responsible for the pine beetle epidemic even though the NDP held power when it started (and no, I don’t think they’re responsible either).
Yes, there are log exports. But they are exported from private land and or aboriginal land, and only after local mills have been given the opportunity to bid a fair price. If they don’t, the owners of those logs can sell them overseas if they wish. Log exports don’t come from crown owned land unless there’s absolutely no one in B.C. who wants them. So log exports didn’t take the jobs, in fact, they created lots of bush jobs.
Now, what I don’t understand, is people in the forest industry are actually struggling to find workers. When the oil fields boomed, lots of workers went there, and not all of them have come back. And even those who have, likely will leave again.
A couple of decades ago, if you wanted to work at Canfor, you better know somebody who already does. Now, Canfor is recruiting. So, it isn’t all that bad.
You really need to get out and talk to people walking around in the real world instead of cruising the net for whatever happens to support your position of the day.
NO ski51, it’s that bad!!! How do we know it’s that bad? Because of the number of people leaving this area.
Vanderhoof: 2016: 4,439 2011: 4,480 Population decline: -41
Fort St. James: 2016: 1,598 2011: 1,691 Population decline: -93
Fraser Lake: 2016: 988 2011: 1,167 Population decline: -179
Burns Lake: 2016: 1,779 2011: 2,029 Population decline: -250
Houston: 2016: 2,993 2011: 3,147 Population decline: -154
Quesnel: 2016: 9,879 2011:10,007 Population decline: -128
Williams Lake: 2016:18,277 2011:18,490 Population decline: -213
Chetwynd: 2016: 2,503 2011: 2,635 Population decline: -132
Valemount: 2016: 1,020 2011: 1,021 Population decline: -1
McBride: 2016: 616 2011: 586 Population increase: +30
Mackenzie: 2016: 3,714 2011: 3,507 Population increase: +207
ht tp://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/index-eng.cfm
NO ONE in their right minds, but fantasy minded Christy Clark government supporters, could sell to the rest of us, that the above numbers are a “good” thing!
I’m not arguing about the job losses, I’m just saying you can’t lay the blame solely at the feet of the Liberals. Technology has reduced the demand for newsprint/pulp, and the pine beetle timber supply. Neither controlled by the Liberals.
When I lived in Mackenzie there was 5500 people so it’s worse than you think. McBride is now almost a ghost town. Thing is, all the new jobs are in the technological sector, and a lot of that can be done anywhere in the world. How do you get software developers to live up here. Heck, a mother on welfare with 3 children could live quite nicely up here but she doesn’t. She’d rather have less down there, than more up here.
I hate to break it to you, but the NDP are going to come up here and say all sorts of lovely things about how they care about the North, and how important we are, but if they get in power, they’ll be no different than the Liberals. They’ll take our money, and they’ll spend it down there.
Truth is, all this election is about, is not that we’ll be screwed, just who will do it. This might cause you to blow a blood vessel, but Gordon Campbell really was the only Premier to give a crap about us. I’ve lived in this area under NDP and Liberal and Socred, and they all treated us the same way, as a cow to be milked, but fed just enough to survive.
Guess they all moved to PG, our population is up in city limits and more outside the immediate area in the Regional District. You know, the district you said PG is not part of a few days ago.
Might be the reason, which is why our “unemployment” rate is up as well, my, my, my, so much bad news just before an election… tsk, tsk, tsk.
” I’m just saying you can’t lay the blame solely at the feet of the Liberals. Technology has reduced the demand for newsprint/pulp, and the pine beetle timber supply. Neither controlled by the Liberals.” ????????? Not so . The liberals are in charge of infrastructure spending . You are right about the technology sector taking jobs from this region . That’s what Andrew Weaver is talking about . The lower mainland/vanisle own the tech sector because of the north side lack of Hightech infrastructure. The six million to get us up to a level playing field with 604 wouldn’t even pay for one of her bridges . The tech sector is the fastest growing sector in BC . Any mla wanna be not addressing this issue is worth talking about . All the kids that want to work in the tech sector have been sucked up by 604 .
Meant to say the six million dollars needed to start wouldn’t even be enough to paint one of her bridges . Could it be that ,the reason that this pittance hasn’t been spent isn’t the cost but the effect ?
Oh give it up! Spend that 6 mil and the tech sector will pay just as much attention to us as they are now – none. I read that article from Weaver, he doesn’t have a clue how businesses operate. The only way they would move to here is with massive government subsidies, and we all know how that works out for the taxpayer. How’s that PG call center doing….oh, right.
Regardless of all the political comments and opinions;
Glad to see someone stepping up to contest the position.
metalman.
The only thing Shirley has done is run around and look for good news stories so she can have her picture taken with it. I did not see her standing beside MT Polly when dam let go or did I see her getting her picture taken beside the two mills that blew up. IMO she has not pounded her fist on the table to have needed changes in this area because she would not want to upset her leader. Many of the positions that she held, she had no experience. Time for change.
And Natalie Fletcher has experience in these positions? Please explain
Shes not running as a minister of anything, she is just running as an NDP candidate.
Exactly
Thumbs up Bent!
BH the big increase in population in the 90s under NDP was Klien sending his non workers to BC because anyone & thier dog could easily get welfare
You’re exactly correct, kendoo!
BC’s NDP stood at the border with open arms, welcoming welfare cases into the province!
People on welfare in Alberta looked across the border and said “Why on earth am I here, freezing my butt off in Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Calgary, Lloydminster, Ft. McLeod and other countless Alberta cities and town, when I can hop a bus or hitchhike to BC and collect welfare on the sunny beaches of the Okanagan, English Bay or Stanley Park?”
kendoo- They would go hungry in this province today at $610.00 a month. Nothing left over to even feed the dog.
Was 510.00 back when the NDP was in power, 520.00 10 years later
So? Back then MSP premiums were 30% less, so were hydro rates, and insurance rates, food prices were a lot lower, rent was way lower as well, etc. Heck, $510 dollar per month back then would be the equivalent of at least $750 dollars today in purchasing power.
Come on slinky, you can’t compare two different welfare amounts across decades with out looking at the effects of inflation on the costs of essential goods and services. Slinky, better step up your game, if you want to win over any new friends, or influence your enemies.
The BC Liberal Government’s solution is to set social assistance so low, we get to have the highest child poverty rate in the country! There, they really fixed that hey? Who would want to move to BC and watch their children starve… pure genius on the part of the BC Liberals.
I really like this government’s method of off-loading welfare costs as well, set welfare so low knowing charitable organization will step in and at least feed the poor. Why do you think the number people using food banks in BC are at a record high? A brilliant way to save money off the poor. in my opinion.
Peeps, you ask “Who would want to move to BC and watch their children starve”
Here’s a better question…why move to BC if welfare gives you more in another province?
Welfare rates were 510.00 when the NDP took power, they raised them – called all the collector’s “varmints” “vagrants” and then lowered the rate to discourage people from collecting and made collecting harder – plus made all it so all the single mothers with children over 12 lost benefits if they didn’t actively prove they were seeking work. When they lost power 10 years later the rate was 520.00
Yay, the NDP are such a wonderful socialist party!
So? Back then MSP premiums were 30% less, so were hydro rates, and insurance rates, food prices were a lot lower, rent was way lower as well, etc. Heck, $510 dollar per month back then would be the equivalent of at least $750 dollars today in purchasing power.
Come on slinky, you can’t compare two different welfare amounts across decades with out looking at the effects of inflation on the costs of essential goods and services. Slinky, better step up your game, if you want to win over any new friends, or influence your enemies.
OMG slinky, say it isn’t so!
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