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Islanders hear from Federal Liberal Environment Critic

“This past week has not been a good week for the environment, not that we’ve had many good weeks in the past 10 years,” Liberal Member of Parliament John McKay told Bowen Islanders last weekend. “This past week was budget week, and Mr.
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MP John McKay from the Scarborough-Guildwood riding in Ontario sits with Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal candidate for the Sea-to-Sky riding, at Bowen Island Children’s Centre.

“This past week has not been a good week for the environment, not that we’ve had many good weeks in the past 10 years,” Liberal Member of Parliament John McKay told Bowen Islanders last weekend. “This past week was budget week, and Mr. Harper presented a 518 page document, which is really the Conservative platform dressed up as a bogus balanced budget, and it did not mention climate change once. Five-hundred and eighteen pages, and the existential threat to human-kind does not get mentioned once.”

McKay came to Bowen Island alongside the Liberal candidate for the Sea-to-Sky riding, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, to speak with islanders last Saturday. McKay, from Pickering, Ontario, has served six-terms as a Liberal MP, and has been the opposition critic on the environment since 2013.

He told islanders about Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s carbon pricing plan (the “medicare” approach) and said that he viewed Canada as a renewable energy superpower, sighting all the untapped hydro-potential in British Columbia and the $1 billion worth of solar panels that are now generating power in Prince Edward County (east of Toronto).

McKay also answered a variety of questions from the audience.On the subject of the Liberal policy on Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), McKay responded that the issue hinges on Canadians’ confidence in the regulatory framework including the National Energy Board. However, an audience member did inform him of the fact that internationally and in the US, there are specific LNG regulations.

When asked how a new government could possibly start to rebuild all of the environmental legislation that has been destroyed by the Conservatives over the past decade, McKay said that if it were up to him he would “legislatively reverse” each individual bill that has been watered down by the Conservatives (ie: the Species at Risk Act) and try to pass each one again in Parliament.

Goldsmith-Jones responded that the number-one job in this regard is to “get back to a level of respect where the federal ministers treat the premiers with respect, recognize the incredible role the mayors and councillors have... in every community that comes out differently, I think that leadership is important.”