By Chris Beach

Northern View

The Northern View #58: BC’s fight for economic survival

Mar 5, 2025 | 8:30 AM

Prince George-Mackenzie MLA Kiel Giddens made a huge difference recently when his private member’s bill, created to save the local Tidewater Renewables Bio-Diesel Refinery, passed in the BC legislature.

This should eliminate US companies from dumping renewable diesel into BC after getting government subsidies on both sides of the border and selling on the cheap, which is what almost put Tidewater out of business.

While Giddens just got elected last Fall for the first time, he’s already proving to be an effective representative. Saving Tidewater is a win for the 165 workers whose jobs were at stake, for the company who chose Prince George and invested almost $400 million to build the project, for the city that will maintain that sizeable chunk of industrial tax base, and for the larger community that benefits from those workers and their families staying in town and supporting other businesses, schools and organizations.

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On the other side of the chamber, Premier David Eby has committed to eliminating all interprovincial trade barriers to bolster our economy in the face of catastrophic US tariffs. But so far only Eby and the Nova Scotia Premier have committed to making this happen. That’s simply not good enough.

We’ve already been talking about this for at least half a century, and now is the time to act. We need to take a page out of Trump’s playbook and make a sweeping definitive cut to these barriers and allow goods and services and professionals to move freely throughout the country.

Because pleading at the White House and pointing out the facts about the almost non-existent fentanyl crossing into the US clearly won’t make any difference. Our best strategy in this trade war against Donald Trump is to counter strength with strength.

I’d rather see Canada go down swinging with our pride intact, rather than begging on our knees. Chances are though, that many sectors in the US economy will also suffer greatly, the stock market will continue to plummet, and Trump will be forced to change his course.

I’m Chris Beach and this is the Northern View.

Editors note: The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of Pattison Media.