’ try. And if the basis for the
_ existence of these commu-

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TRADE & COMMERCE . |

\ ' hat has happened to Cassiar appears:

to be -happening to Stewart, which is in turn a
concern for Terrace. If the federal government doesn’t
change the way it deals with small, one-industry

towns in the north, says Skeena MP Jim Fulton, we

may all share Cassiar’ s fate...
What most northern
Canadian communities

| Eventually.

have. in common is the

very purpose in their
being: a single industry

. that . attracted workers,
and in time a few support-

ing services. In Cassiar, it :

was asbestos. In Stewart, Samm ooo

copper. In Terrace, fores- <i Fulton: Two
percent return not
good enough. ,

nities fades from the pic-
ture, so do the communities themselves.

'- The key to changing this apparent destiny of one-
industry towns is diversification, says Fulton. Diver-

sification, though, takes imagination and money —

mostly money — and that, according to Fulton i is a
concept ignored by Ottawa.

- Diversification can mean many things. In Cowi-
chan it meant sweaters. It became a community, says
Fulton, where a lot of people ended up with really
good jobs... at home. And the most talented of these
home-based entrepreneurs make as much as $40,000
a year. More importantly, these home-based busi-
nesses provide Cowichan with an alternate source of
income, which means the community doesn’t rely
solely on a single resource.

50 Terrace Review — March 13, 1992

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TOT RY cated 0 Bape CoS ahe alah

DIVERSIFY OR DIE .

| One-industry towns _
need federal support, Fulton says |

7 tt t takes financial help to diversify, says Fulton,
and he believes that is a federal responsibility. The
federal government, he says, should be spending
money on things like regional research and develop-
ment and marketing studies.

It’s too late for Cassiar. "It’s going to have to be
shut down,” says Fulton. There were opportunities,
as recently as five or 10 years ago. Fulton sees the
problem in Ottawa's policy of skimming off Cassiar
tax revenues and never putting anything back.

Fulton elaborates: there were about 500 workers
in Cassiar making around $60,000 to $70,000 per
year each. These workers paid something like 35%
income tax, for an annual federal take of around $10
million. In return, they got two part-time postal
workers, two RCMP officers... and that’s it. .

_ "You can’t tell me that those four or five federally
paid positions in any way deal with the kinds of
dough that’s come out of Cassiar in the last 40
years," says Fulton. In fact, if you use the numbers
above you will calculate something equivalent to a
return of about 2% of the federal "investment" made
by Cassiar workers, And that, says Fulton, is not
good enough,

To say all northern towns are destined to become
ghost towns is‘an exaggeration, of course. Stewart is
a little better prepared than Cassiar, and Terrace is
much more diversified than Stewart and Cassiar put
together.

First, what does Fulton see for Stewart? There
are plenty of minerals in the ground. "It's the most
highly mineralized mother lode in all of North
America," says Fulton. "Everyone who's associated
with the mineral sector knows that."

The problem is getting it out of the ground and

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