MLA Coralee Oakes spent some time with The Observer to discuss 2023 and look ahead to the potential issues of 2024, based on what she’s hearing in communities and the hallways of the Legislature. She’s meeting new constituents in our recently re-drawn riding now called Prince George-Cariboo North. Oakes is the BC United Party’s shadow minister of Advanced Education and sits on four Legislative committees.
“Affordability is going to continue to be top of mind in the region,” she said. “People are very concerned about the cost of everything. I’m hearing about pressures on the economy and people’s jobs.”
She is concerned about a particular piece of policy brought forward by the governing BC NDP party: the Clean B.C. Plan, which, based on modelling research she’s seen, will negatively impact agriculture, pulp, forestry, mining, light industry and transportation.
“If you look at our region, those are the sectors that drive our economy. That modelling is very alarming, so I’ll be paying close attention to that,” Oakes said.
Another key concern for her is the state of the healthcare system, where local professionals have to provide care to people they know while, in her view, facing a lack of resources.
For education, she’s hearing from families about special-needs kids having too few supports, which symbolizes a lack of teachers and staffing of all kinds, in the Kindergarten-to-Grade-12 system.
For post-secondary, her concern is around a middle class/middle aged demographic that can’t afford promotional education, and also unable to help their children get best value out of their opportunities right at the start of their career planning.
“There is a sense of hopelessness,” Oakes observed. “You see those impacts in our communities. People are putting their educations on hold, or they just can’t afford it. And it’s not just the tuition, it’s housing, the cost of living, all of it. It is holding back people pursuing opportunities.”
Forest policies are amplifying the shortage of fibre in the bush, which translates into fewer jobs and less municipal tax base just when it’s in particular need, she said; and current agriculture policy is tying food production in so much red tape it is still easier for stores to obtain foreign food because B.C. people haven’t the incentives to be the best farmers they can be. It means high food costs, less use of B.C. land and human resource in food production, and many regions living without food security.
She counts 53 distinct communities in the riding, up from the previous 41, and one of the favourite parts of her job, she said, was interacting in person with as many as possible, going to their ground.
On the positive side of her interactions, “There has been a resurgence in community pride, a lot of different community-based events, and I am certainly alive to that,” she said. And while she is aware that daunting pressures beset them, small businesses are one area where over-regulation and over-credentializing hasn’t taken away all the economic and personal momentum for those inclined to be entrepreneurs.
She promised to remain vigilant and vocal for area constituents, and invited anyone with questions or comments to reach out in 2024 and help her advocate for the Quesnel/Cariboo region.