NDP's James puts focus on youth
Delegates listen to NDP leader Carole James at the party convention in Vancouver Saturday.
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Updated: November 28, 2009 11:55 AM
VANCOUVER – NDP leader Carole James has promised her party she will topple the B.C. Liberal government with a plan to eliminate child poverty and improve education for the next generation.
Speaking at the party's convention in Vancouver Saturday, James offered few specifics, vowing to consult with the public and "concerned business leaders" before detailing her platform for the next election in 2013. She continued a main theme of the fall legislature session, that B.C. has Canada's highest rate of child poverty and its lowest minimum wage
Asked to detail her plan after her speech, James said she has three years to develop it.
"The specifics that we've already talked about are things like increasing the minimum wage, building affordable housing, and making sure that you provide supports for quality child care," she said. "It's pretty clear that child poverty isn't important to this government. It is to me."
James related one of her favourite stories to a packed ballroom at the Westin Bayshore hotel, comparing the funding of a new roof for B.C. Place stadium with an appeal by the northern community of Hazelton to put a new roof on their aging ice rink.
B.C. Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair warmed up the crowd for James with a speech that also took aim at Premier Gordon Campbell's record on child poverty, the minimum wage and the closure of mills across B.C.
The harmonized sales tax amounts to a huge "tax shift" from corporations to working people, while the B.C. Liberal government increases raw log exports and reduces social services, Sinclair said.
B.C. Liberal House leader Mike de Jong attended for the speeches by Sinclair and James, and he seized on Sinclair's call for corporations to pay more tax. He noted that James made a similar pitch at the recent Union of B.C. Municipalities convention, where she said an NDP government would cancel the large corporation tax cuts being phased in to offset the carbon tax on fossil fuels.
"She didn't talk about that today, but she relied on a surrogate, Jim Sinclair, to say it for her," de Jong said.
The convention opened Friday with a report from NDP provincial treasurer Cheryl Hewitt, who urged delegates to step up donations and fundraising to pay down an unspecified debt left over from the May election campaign.
The NDP raised about $3 million for the 2009 election despite job losses in the economic slump and "donor fatigue" from party supporters who had recently contributed to federal and municipal campaigns, Hewitt said.
B.C.'s fixed election dates have also resulted in longer, more expensive campaigns, and donations are down for all political parties, she said.
"The Liberals get theirs in big hunks, so they're not as vulnerable," she said.
