When Premier Clark was speaking to the Cranbrook Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce on July 10th of this year, she made these statements:
"Growth today is about 2%, that’s growth over most of the modern western world. Most other jurisdictions have decided they are okay with 2% growth –and that choice means they are going to manage that decline.
We can decide something different. We can decide that rather than managing decline, we can grow. We can grow because we are lucky. That means doing everything we can to support resource development, making sure we are supporting the growth of a mining industry that pays some of the best wages in some of the best jobs you will find any where in the country. If we create more mining jobs by getting out of the way of economic development, by saying we are going to cut red tape, we are going to make sure that you do what needs to be done in an environmentally sound socially responsible way but we aren’t going to get in your way and we aren’t going to tax you out of business."
A month later the Mount Polley tailings pond breach occurred.
From the Tyee:
Documents show government aware of dam safety concerns, including tailings ponds.
B.C.'s minister of energy and mines has vowed to get to the bottom of the Mount Polley mine disaster, but insisted that provincial mine inspections are "as frequent today as they were five years ago." They may be, but they are about half as frequent compared to before the BC Liberal government came into power in 2001 and reduced the rate of such inspections. The Tyee By David P. Ball, 8 Aug 2014
The article continues...However, scan back a bit further to 2001 when the BC Liberals took office and questions emerge about why Bennett chose 2009 as his starting point.
In 2001 there were nearly double the number of mine inspections: 2,021. The year after, the number dropped to 1,496 -- nearly 30 per cent more than 2012 -- before reaching a 2004 decade low of 399 visits.
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