Liberal Candidate Mavis Erickson was born in the north, and, she says, is going to die in the north. She is a Prince George Lawyer with three degrees (A Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Law from UBC and a Master of Law from Harvard Law School), was the tribal chief of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council for six years, and still advocates for missing and murdered women, having spent time as the Highway of Tears Coordinator for the Carrier Sekani Family Services. She came to Tumbler Ridge as part of the Chamber of Commerce All Candidate’s Forum.
I was born in Northern BC, and I have lived in the north all my life. I have grown up in the north, and I love it. I think that it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth, I especially love the summers—the long summer nights, something no one else on earth experiences but us Northerners. And I think that Prince George, peace River, Northern Rockies, needs a loud Northern voice, to speak on their behalf.
Some of my concerns are connectivity in the north. We don’t have a public transit system here. And yet you look at Vancouver, every time we turn around, they’re getting a new train, boat or plane for their public transit system. And yet we can’t even hop a bus from Chetwynd to Tumbler Ridge, you can’t hop a bus to Dawson Creek from here. And I think we need that connectivity between the northern communities. And it’s not there.
We still have a huge, vast wealth of resources in the north, and I don’t see us reaping the benefits from those resources. As Northerners, we deserve it. Our economy’s right now… look at forestry. Look at mining. Things changing quickly, and Canadians are suffering. People are thinking about their pension. Even our pensions don’t look stable. One of the things that the Liberals want to do is they want to ensure that we have stable retirement, they want to change our retirement from the way it is right now, where we would be getting one fourth of our wage. But the liberals want to change it to a third. And that will take seven years to transition. They changed the change the retirement age to 65. The conservatives upped it to 67.
So I think that as Northerners, we need to look at what the Liberals can do for us, and what the Conservatives do. Basically the conservatives cut the tax for the wealthy, and then they cut services to everyone else. All Canadians, especially Northerners need some fall back, the Liberals have also created an EI benefit where a forestry worker can get a two year extension to their EI benefits, because of the forestry sector suffering right now.
The conservatives would have us believe that it’s because we don’t have a software lumber agreement with the US. The US is part of it, But (former Prince George North MLA) Pat Bell and his Liberals work really hard to diversify the forest economy where the Americans were taking up all of the trade and diversified them the only 40 percent going to Americans. So the software lumber agreement might be part of it, but it’s not all of it, as the Conservatives would have you believe.
One of the other things that we don’t have is local wood industries. In Washington State they have all sorts of different shops with local markets where wood is crafted. In Northern BC, the only place you see that is at the farmers market. We don’t have a tourism market for any of our products.
The other issue I think is relative is the Liberal government struck the missing and murdered inquiry into Indigenous women and girls, they struck that commission as soon as they got in. And they completed that commission during their four-year term, which I think is incredible, Other commissions could drag on for up to ten years. So now they have the recommendations from that commission to implement, and they’ve agreed that they would implement them. So I think that that’s important to continue that work. As a northerner safety issues, run across the board. It’s not just about indigenous women, it’s about having the connectivity, and also public transit system, things that will benefit Northerners.
As a First Nations woman, I’ve learned to live with a lot of hope. I think that people can change, I think the Liberals do have the potential to rock the boat. Baby boomers are looking at retirement, and what the Liberals have to offer in terms of the Canadian pension plan, for instance, I mean, there are so few Canadians now that have a have a pension plan outside of that.
And the climate change and diversifying the economy, I think is really urgent and whether we like it or not, we have to go start looking at developing greener energy and stop burning fossil fuels at the rate that rate we are.
The liberals have a climate change plan, and are willing to stand by that in the north, but we really have to start looking forward in terms of our economy. Liberals plan to balance the economy with economic development.
I think it’s in the best interest of Northerners to protect the caribou and create a balanced approach to the protection of caribou. There has to be a balanced approach with the locals.
Why did I decide to run? Mainly it was looking at Trump politics in the USA, and looking at some of the things that Andrew Shear has said, and just really thinking about the state of politics in North America. What that would look like in Canada. And I think that the move to the right in politics is something we all have to play a role in. We all have a say in, and I just thought that running for the Liberal Party was part of that. We talk about having our responsibility and our own democracy.
When we were growing up, in northern BC, we never saw homeless people. If you thought about homelessness, back when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, your typical example would have been a Euro-Canadian man with the old trench coat, no socks, wearing shoes with no laces that was the prototype of a homeless person. But now you look at the homelessness in this country. And it all walks of life. It’s girls and boys, it’s kids, it’s men, it’s women. Maybe I’m wrong, but my memory of homelessness growing up, I don’t ever recall ever seeing a homeless woman. And in a country that so wealthy with resources, and so much to offer, why? Why?
The housing across the country is getting less and less affordable. And we don’t know if our own children will be able to afford a house, let alone our grandchildren. So things that were available to us as Canadians are becoming less and less accessible for many Canadians. Buying a house in Vancouver is out of the question for most income bracket, unless you’re a millionaire. Homelessness is everywhere. It’s in Prince George. It’s cold. Things are getting worse for us instead of better. We’re one of the first generation generations of Canadians to see our life expectancy get shorter.
Northerners should be recipients for a large portion of the income from the Trans Mountain Pipeline. With what’s happening in forestry, in mining, in everything. So with that pipeline, there is a great expectation by the Liberals, that we will be able to transition the economy into a greener one. That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about balance.
It’s interesting to be indigenous, and running for the Liberals. My parents traditionally taught us to vote Liberal. I don’t share the perspective that the Liberals are Eastern, our urban or any of that. Mind you, our people who only got the vote in 1960. That’s about the background of my ideology. I’ve always had hope that the Liberals would be a good voice for myself as First Nations and for my parents who also voted Liberal nationally. They were always optimistic. It may sound funny, but all the residential school teachers used to pound it into their students that they were to vote Liberal.
I was listening to Rick Mercer, the other day on the radio, and he talked about voting, and you know, how we should teach our kids to vote, not who to vote for but just to vote. He said that he remembers in Newfoundland, growing up and soon as he was old enough, his dad made him go, he made them put on his coat, walked to the polls and said “you have to vote.” My father, who is one of the First Nations businessman in Fort St James, he owned a taxi. When the elections came, he used to drive all the First Nations in the area to make sure they got out to vote. They played a very active role in that. So as a child, I saw when I saw my parents going out and being active on the election, when they said that was the only way that we could get ahead was if we all voted. So there was that background. And then when the time came, and I was old enough to vote, sure enough, my mom and my dad said, okay, Put on your coat. We’re going to vote.
So from a very early age I was taught by my parents that you have to go out and vote to make a difference.
And that was part of the reason why they went down into higher education was because of the all the setbacks that we have as First Nations and I have become an advocate early on as a child, My parents used to send me to the store, to the post office, sometimes to the police station with elders to speak on their behalf. They would tell me what they needed, what I need to say, and make sure that they pay the right amount of money and get the right amount of money back. So stuff like that. At a preschool age, I learned how to advocate. I saw the discrimination early on as a young child against our people. And so continued on into law, because of the disparity in our treatment, compared with other Canadians. So I worked as an advocate for our first nation of women and girls, for missing and murdered women and for First Nations in general. I came to see that no, it’s not only the First Nations that need help. We all need help in the north. People are losing their homes. You spend your life working for that, and then you lose it? People spend a life time working for corporations and have lost their pensions. Why? Why do people on the ground have to pay the price for that? That’s not right. They work their entire life to retire in poverty? It’s horrible what people are going through. That’s not fair to anybody.
