Business issues are key in the race to be BC Liberal leader and B.C. premier. A series of Business in Vancouver reports will highlight how the five candidates differ on major policy issues that affect the management of B.C.’s economy and its business climate. Last week’s instalment looked at the harmonized sales tax (“HST strategy separates Liberal leadership candidates” – issue 1103; December 14-20).
This week’s focus: infrastructure investments and the underlying strategy that guides them.
Kevin Falcon, Christy Clark, George Abbott, Mike de Jong and Moira Stilwell all agree that infrastructure investments make sense when the completed project stimulates the economy. The candidates differ, however, on which areas they believe will most affect the economy.
For Clark it was “infrastructure that will support the knowledge economy”; Falcon and de Jong favoured transportation infrastructure; all candidates said they backed infrastructure investment that supports resource industries.
“The priority needs to be with projects that will in turn create subsidiary economic development opportunities on the land base,” Abbott said.
Falcon, who spent six years overseeing the province’s transportation infrastructure investments, stressed spinoff benefits related to investment in people and goods movement.
“I’m a big supporter,” he said, “in making strategic transportation investments because there are huge payoffs in it.”
Clark and Stilwell declined to discuss specific infrastructure investments they’d make as premier. Abbott, Falcon and de Jong did.
“We will be talking in the coming weeks about the specifics,” Clark told BIV on December 8 when she launched her campaign.
Abbott, Falcon and de Jong all called the electrification of Highway 37 in northwestern B.C. (the Northwest Transmission Line) a worthwhile infrastructure project.
Indeed, a 2008 Macquarie North America study showed that eight separate projects worth $3.5 billion in capital investment would be viable if a $400 million power line were built along Highway 37 (see “Plug pulled on northwestern B.C. power line” – issue 968; May 13-19, 2008).
Macquarie expects those projects to create 2,000 jobs, generate over $300 million in annual revenue and provide more than $75 million in annual tax revenue for various levels of government.
“The expansion of the container port at Prince Rupert is very, very important,” Falcon added. “So is Ridley [Terminals near Prince Rupert]. We’re working with the federal government to get new investment in Ridley to recognize the fact that they’re already at capacity with the massively increasing shipments of wood pellets and coal.”
All candidates support maintaining the province’s $410 million commitment to help build the Evergreen Line in the Lower Mainland’s northeast sector.
“I was a really strong proponent of getting the Evergreen Line off the ground – turning it from an idea to something closer to reality,” said Clark. “It’s still not a reality, so we need to make sure that happens.”
All candidates support public private partnerships whenever possible and are quick to rattle of recent P3 projects, such as the Abbotsford General Hospital and Cancer Centre, that they believe are successful examples of government infrastructure spending.
“I’m a big supporter of public-private partnerships, not because it’s an ideological thing but because of the evidence,” Falcon said. “The evidence is in and it’s overwhelming. We have delivered more than $10 billion worth of capital projects that are all characterized by two things: they were delivered on or ahead of schedule and on or under budget.”
The province has used P3s to transfer risk on large infrastructure projects that have ranged from highways (Sea-to-Sky Highway) to bridges (the William R. Bennett Bridge) to the Canada Line rapid transit project. De Jong wants to expand the use of P3s to transfer risk when investing in the justice system: “P3s could be used for justice facilities, courthouses that incorporate remand centres. This is expensive infrastructure.”