The People’s Alliance of New Brunswick believes we have a fair set of resolutions to present at this week’s forum on natural gas hosted by the provincial government in Fredericton.
During Thursday’s event, party president Jason Inness will represent the People’s Alliance in the stakeholders’ forum to present our party’s suggestions, which covers protection of citizen’s rights, maximizing the province’s financial benefit and protection of the environment.
“Our goal with these ideas is to create a balance where industry can come in and invest in our natural resource while at the same time sharing that wealth with the province and not allowing the individual New Brunswicker and the area they live in fall by the wayside,” Inness said. “These resolutions are something we believe all parties can live with.”
Some of the individual resolutions include ideas such as: requiring companies to perform a full environmental remediation immediately following a project’s conclusion, allowing landowners the right in certain cases to deny exploration on their property and putting 50 per cent of all royalties from the resource towards retiring our provincial debt.
Besides our own initiatives, Inness added he is anxious to hear what the other stakeholders have to say so our party can learn all we can about this issue and hear all sides.
“I believe we have a good grip on making this situation the best possible for people living in this province,” he said. “But the knowledge that will be shared at this meeting should definitely provide us with a broader perspective of what other parties are thinking.”
People’s Alliance party leader Kris Austin said he feels confident our party has put forward solid suggestions as the province decides what to do with this controversial issue.
“Various members of our provincial executive took the opportunity to make suggestions in the report we’re presenting at the stakeholders forum,” Austin said. “This was a team effort to put forward viable solutions for the betterment of New Brunswick.”
Austin added while our suggestions are being made with the average New Brunswicker in mind, none of the ideas should pose a problem for the corporations looking to develop our natural resource.
“We’ve heard from industry time and time again how safe a process this is. So if that is the case then the measures we suggest putting in place to protect individual citizens shouldn’t cause them any concern at all,” Austin said.
To view our full submission to the natural gas forum, please check out our website at http://www.peoplesalliancenb.com or click here for the document
