Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Though only a little more than 2% of the electorate voted for him in the last provincial election, John Twigg is back. This time he is running for the Conservative party - which has not contested this seat for decades. Twig especially wants to talk about self sufficiency in food, policing and banking
He is a veteran journalist who previously served as Premier Dave Barrett’s press secretary (1972-75), and was the Financial Editor for the Regina Leader-Post (1978-85). He also successfully lobbied for fo the creation of the West Coast Trail and Nitinat Triangle portions of Pacific Rim National Park, as well as pioneering the concept of community gardens in Victoria’s James Bay.
He has been living in the Campbell River area, for the past 25 years.
Q: “Why are you running in this election?”
Twigg replied, “When you run you get opportunities to answer questions like the one you just asked. I use this opportunity to raise what I think is one of the major concerns for British Columbians, that’s to get more self sufficiency. When we look around the world at the troubles that are already there and getting worse - and I think the people on Cortes relate to this - I think British Columbia urgently needs to have self sufficiency strategies.
“Certainly in food, of course we have lots of water, but we also need self sufficiency in policing and in banking. I’ve been advocating the revival of the BC provincial police force parallel to the RCMP and all the municipal forces. I also want to revive the Bank of BC and issue currency. That may sound a little outlandish but, for the province’s centenary in 1958, Premier W.A.C. Bennet issued a silver dollar without approval from the Bank of Canada. So, yes, BC could have its own parallel security, police force, self sufficiency in food and many other things that are important to maintain the civil order in society.”
“There are other reasons too, like I would more jobs, better management of resources> There is more than one reason I’m running, but the main one is to get out this message of raising BC’s self sufficiency.”
