New Democratic Party member of Parliament for East Vancouver Libby Davies was in Sechelt last Saturday, Jan. 24, showing her support for NDP federal election candidate Larry Koopman.
Koopman was selected last summer for the West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky riding. Saturday was a fundraiser for Koopman, who will be going into his first federal election scheduled for this October.
“I think he is a very good candidate for this community. He’s a small business person, he’s been very involved in the community,” Davies said of Koopman. “I think he’s going to do a terrific job.”
Recent statistics have named B.C. as having the worst median income in Canada (meaning that the middle class is rapidly vanishing from this province), and Vancouver as being the city with the second highest cost of living in the world, right after Hong Kong.
Koopman is looking to address these alarming statistics. His platform supports jobs in the economy as long as they can be done with environmental responsibility.
“I’m a strong believer in growing the green, clean energy sector to produce the new jobs of the century,” Koopman said. “There’s a tremendous opportunity for job growth and job creation in the clean energy sector.
“It’s something this government has not done, has ignored, and it’s something I feel personally passionate about promoting and pushing that agenda. That is how we’re going to grow the jobs in this country.”
Koopman may be running in a challenging riding, but according to Davies, the NDP is going into the campaign season with a strong base.
“Here in B.C. it’s really Conservatives and NDP, that’s really what the reality is. Across the country, other than the NDP seats that we won — which was close to 100 — the NDP came second in 107 ridings. So that’s a very big base to start from; we have a very strong caucus,” Davies said. “I think the [Conservatives] have really lost touch with B.C. and so our job is to turn that around.”
