Coralee Oakes is the new opposition critic for emergency preparedness…
“I am extremely excited to have the opportunity to bring the lessons that we’ve learned through the wildfires and the floods that we’ve experienced, and to bring government to account on the gaps that we currently have.  We need to be doing a better job on preventative work and knowing that you need to be supporting communities long after these events happen.”
Oakes says she has spent a considerable amount of the summer working with communities that have been devastated by landslides…
“When you look at the residents of Quesnel-Hydraulic and the residents of West Fraser, we see the significant impacts of the changing nature of freshets and wildfires, and we just need to be doing things differently, whether that’s doing more preventative road maintenance, the culverts, the ditching, work like that, putting investments in the front end of things, I’ll be strong champion for.”
We asked Oakes if the fact that the Cariboo has had all of this played a role in the decision to make here the critic…
“I met with our leader Andrew Wilkinson and I have some significant ideas for developing our platform really focused on emergency preparedness, just because I know how important it is to communities and it’s not just how it impacts your day to day life but it impacts the economy of the region, and we have some significant gaps that currently exist, we have silos that exist in government and I hope to tear down some of those silos and get some much needed resources into the region and across the province.”
Oakes was previously the opposition critic for small business, and she was also the Small Business Minister when the Liberals were in power the previous term.
That role is now part of the Economic Development, Competitiveness, Trade, & Technology portfolio that is headed up by Jas Johal.