B.C. NDP makes tourism announcement days before Liberals set to do same thing

VICTORIA – B.C. Opposition New Democrat Leader Adrian Dix denies his party is upstaging the Liberal government in connection to a tourism-related announcement.

Dix promised today that if an NDP government were elected next May it would re-establish Tourism BC, the industry-led, government-funded tourism marketing body the Liberal government dumped six months before the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The Liberals say their own news conference announcing the return of Tourism BC was set for Monday, something Jobs, Tourism and Innovation Minister Pat Bell told the Vancouver Board of Trade in August.

Dix says the New Democrats have been calling for a return to an industry-led Tourism BC model, with its formula-based provincial funding since the provincial marketing plan was eliminated.

He says when the government folded Tourism BC into tourism ministry budgets the industry became tied to the ups and downs of provincial revenues.