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Letter to the Editor: Former Conservative MP responds to Stetski’s climate column

David Wilks is the mayor of Sparwood and the former Conservative MP for Kootenay-Columbia
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In response to Wayne Stetski’s column that ran in the Cranbrook Townsman on July 26.

You make it sound as though it is only the No Development Party (NDP) who can solve Canada’s climate change issues. The problem is that your party’s solution to climate change is to eliminate fossil fuels and thus eliminating tens of thousands of jobs in the process.

Canada has been blessed with vast amounts of natural resources not limited to oil, gas, coal and a host of other raw metals that are in huge demand around the world. The taxes that are paid by these companies to all levels of government provide Canadians with a standard of living that is the envy of most around the world. In fact you benefit from the extraction of these natural resources from the car you drive to the house you live in.

You are quick to see fault in every other federal party platform, but are extremely weak on explaining the NDP platform. In desperation your party along with the Liberals will, if nothing else works bring up the name Stephen Harper. The Conservative party has never denied that climate change is real. But creating and forcing a carbon tax on every Canadian in hopes that it will somehow buy our way out of this dilemma is misleading. The reality is that those in the natural resources sector are best aligned to do research and development to improve upon their industry and seek solutions and innovative ideas for the future.

You and your party like to demonize the industries that are the main stay to the Canadian economy which is ironically an attack on the Unions that you seek support from. Let’s see how much support you get from the Steelworkers Union when you continue to attack the natural resource sector which includes the coal industry of the Elk Valley.

David Wilks

Mayor of Sparwood, former Kootenay-Columbia Conservative MP