Walter Cobb is a former BC Liberal MLA (Cariboo South, 2001-2005) and now is in his third term as mayor of Williams Lake (population 10,700).
Red tape and I don’t get along very well at all. And it’s not good for my city, my region, my province or the country as a whole.
Our region and province are very dependent on resources, whether it be agriculture or forestry or mining.
Mining is a big part of our community, starting with the Barkerville Gold Rush in B.C.’s Cariboo region around 1860. But now we have red tape throttling development.
The proposed Prosperity Mine, 125 kilometres south of Williams Lake, has reserves of 5.3 billion pounds of copper and 13.3 million ounces of gold. It’s huge. It would employ 550 people, create even more spin-off jobs and add $340 million to our GDP each year.
But we now have been through years of process and government red tape on this, and we still have no mine and no jobs and no government revenue.
For the rest of this column: https://theprovince.com/opinion/walter-cobb-red-tape-hurts-investment-in-canada