Opposition Leader Ches Crosbie says it’s time the premier started thinking outside the box when it comes to securing the future of the province’s offshore oil industry.
Crosbie says there are no guarantees that the 40 million dollars announced for the West White Rose project yesterday will amount to anything.
He says the time is now for bold financial decisions, regardless of the province’s debt.
He says as premier, if he couldn’t sway the federal government on an equity stake, he would borrow the investment money needed to purchase a stake in the project to get it pumping oil again, adding it would be an investment that would yield return for the province.
Husky will match the $41.5-million received, bringing the total for now to $83-million dollars.
(Construction on the West White Rose project. Photo courtesy Trades NL.)
NDP Leader Allison Coffin is concerned that the 40 million dollars given to Husky Energy to sustain the West White Rose project will go to waste.
Coffin says while it’s great to save 330 jobs in the short-term, that remains only about a fifth of the 1,500 people employed last year.
She says there are no guarantees that the project will even continue after 2021, which is even more reason to diversify the province’s economy beyond oil and gas, an industry she says is clearly in decline.
Coffin says the money could’ve yielded greater results in the mining industry, where iron ore is valued at 130 dollars a tonne.
She says that would’ve meant more jobs, and more spinoffs from those jobs over a longer period of time.
Instead, she says oil industry workers are being told to stay in the province and hope there’ll be a job for them in a year or more from now.
