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MERRITT, B.C. — The mayor of a hard hit oil and gas community in British Columbia’s northeast says the provincial government’s rural economic development strategy fails to recognize the dire straits facing his town and other remote areas.
Bill Streeper, the mayor of the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality in Fort Nelson, said Friday stores are closing and people unable to pay their mortgages are handing him the keys to their homes and leaving town.
“We are having an economic crisis, not issues, it’s a crisis,” he said. “We physically need to see growth happening. Words are no longer available. It’s hard to give the bank words.”
Streeper said at least 70 per cent of the community’s former oil and gas operations are vacant and many former workers have left town to find jobs elsewhere in Canada. He said many fathers have left Fort Nelson to find work leaving their families in homes that can’t be sold because their values have plummeted.