Johns prevents federal election

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Courtenay – Alberni MP Gord Johns was one of 3 MP’s holding the balance of power yesterday.

The minority Liberals needed members outside their party to vote for their budget, or the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois could have caused the government to fall on a confidence motion.

In the end, Green Party MP Elizabeth May supported the budget while Johns and fellow NDP MP Lori Idlout from Nunavut abstained.

Johns said he did his job as a Member of Parliament, bringing his constituents voices to Ottawa instead of the other way around.

“I talked to every single mayor: 9 mayors in my riding, 3 regional district chairs, 17 elected chief counsellors – all of them were unanimous and they didn’t want the government to fall,” he said. “I did consultation. We’re being the adult in the room listening to our constituents who said right now is not the time to have an election.”

While most of Johns’ fellow NDP’ers voted against the budget, he said be felt compelled to fight for budget elements he negotiated.

“At the same time, there were things in the budget that were important that I fought for: a biomass tax credit that’s going to create and protect hundreds of jobs in the forest sector that we’ve been advocating for years for, the first ever National aerial firefighting force which is going to generate an investment of a quarter of $1 billion to fight wildfire across Canada and hopefully Coulson will be one of the beneficiaries of that,” he said. “Things that affected people in Port Alberni in particular, that people in Port Alberni have been asking for. I was being asked to make a decision whether I was going to plunge us into an election, vote against things that we fought for and wanted, or vote for a budget we didn’t agree with, so I chose to abstain.”

The vote passed 170 to 168.