Liberals may have favoured Skeena Cellulose rescue SKEENA CELLULOSE may have been bailed out if provincial Liberals had they been in power, a group of MLAs from the party said during a northwest tour last week. But they weren’t sure what form their rescue plan would have taken. And one, Vancouver MLA Colin Hansen, said it might have involved job loss for some workers. He said a Liberal rescue plan may have concentrated on the company’s sawmill operations in Terrace, Carmaby and Smithers and its timber licences, “The company has got some valuable assets and perhaps there is a need fora modern pulp mill, but maybe not like the one in Prince Rupert,’ said Hansen. “And maybe there may be some short term pain in these types of situations.” Another Liberal MLA, party house leader Gary Farreli-Collins, said compa- Liberals lean toward recall PROVINCIAL LIBERAL MLAs touring the area last week all but endorsed the growing campaign here to recall NDP MLA Helmut Giesbrecht, Liberal house leader Gary Farrell-Collins described Giesbrecht as an MLA who doesn’t stand up for his con- Stituents and is invisible in Victoria. **We never hear from the guy,”’ said Farrell-Collins. “He's not a factor in the legislature.”’ The house leader added that Giesbrecht has done little to represent Skeena Cellulose’s unsecured creditors in his riding, And while the Liberal party backs the principle of recall, it won’t get involved with local campaigns. “We don’t have to en- courage anybody in Skeena,’’ said Farrell- Collins. Yet he didn’t deny that lo- cal Liberals are involved as individuals. “They have a right to do that,” said one of the other MLAs, Barry Penner from Chilliwack. “It’s no sur- prise that people in public life before are interested in public life today.” kk kkk Local: NDF consitulency association president Frank Rowe says the idea behind recall is being abused. ‘After an election you live with whoever is elected and with whatever party is elected until the next time around,’' said Rowe, He disputes the claims that the campaign to unseat Hel- mut Giesbrecht is a local ef- fort. ‘T's not really grass roots. This is not something “based in the constituency but.a well organized effort to unseat the goverament,”’ added Rowe, That’s in reference to the NDP goverament’s slim majority and the idea that just a few successful recall campaigns could switch the balance of power toward the opposition Liberals. ‘If you go through the recall campaign item by item my opinion is what you have is an election platform and that’s not what recall is about,” he said. Recall has a place should there be a breach of the pub- lic trust over a MLA’s ac- . tions, Rowe continued, kkkkn Liberal MLAs Farreil- Collins and Barry Penner were joined by compatriots Colin Hansen and Ida Chong on the northwest tour, They held a breakfast ses- sion with focal unsecured creditors of Repap and with provincial, Reform party members, Farrell-Collins ny management changes might be in order to put the company on the right track. Yet he said the Liberal on- position didn’t have the kind of information the NDP government had in making up its rescue plan. But Hansen, Fartell- Collins and the other MLAs said Skeena Cellulase’s overriding problem resis with NDP policies they say are hurting business. ‘What the government has done is to create an eco- nomic climate where in- vestors don’t want to create jobs or preserve jobs,’’ said Hansen. He said B.C.’s economic Colin Hansen growth has dropped from first in the country to last. “(There are crises happen- ing from city to city and from company to compa- ny,’ added Hansen. ‘The answer is not 10 bail out each company as cach crisis occurs but to create an eco- nomic program to allow companies to operate.”’ Farrell-Collins said in- vestors are staying away from B.C, in favour of Ai- berta. Nobody wants to come to B.C. and take part in a Skcena Cellulose restructur- ing because of the economic climate here, he continved, “We'll be back here in four or five years looking at it again unless there are same real changes,’ said Farrell-Collins of Skeena Cellulose. The MLAs also criticized employment and investment ministry Dan Miller for his role in the Skeena Cellulose bail out, saying he managed to protect the Prince Rupert pulp mill’s unionized workers. “Miller (the MLA from North Coast which includes Prince Rupert) looked after his own constituents but what about the unsecured creditors?”’? asked Farrell- Collins. 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