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Liberal leadership candidate Joyce Murray supports sewage treatment

Liberal leadership hopeful Joyce Murray supports the region’s provincially ordered secondary sewage treatment — unlike at least two of her challengers.
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Liberal leadership candidate Joyce Murray, left, talks to Green Party of B.C. leader Jane Sterk at the University of Victoria on Thursday.

Liberal leadership hopeful Joyce Murray supports the region’s provincially ordered secondary sewage treatment — unlike at least two of her challengers.

“I think we need to treat the sewage when the testing is showing it’s creating a problem,” said Murray, MP for Vancouver-Quadra and a former B.C. environment minister. “But let’s find a way to have that treatment serve our other goals of energy efficiency and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

During Victoria’s recent federal byelection, Liberal leadership candidates Justin Trudeau and Marc Garneau supported candidate Paul Summerville’s assertion that ocean currents adequately disperse the screened sewage discharged into local waters, making the current plan to build a $783-million secondary sewage treatment plant in Esquimalt by 2018 unnecessary.

Murray spoke at the University of Victoria on Thursday, bringing the same message she’s been delivering across the country. “If you like my commitment to a sustainable society and would like to see Stephen Harper defeated so we could have a more constructive electoral system in Canada, then sign up as a supporter by the end of this month,” Murray said in an interview.

Murray’s platform supports a non-compete pact among parties in the next federal election.

Under her proposal, opposition parties would hold a run-off to decide who would run in ridings the Conservatives won in the last election despite having less than 50 per cent of votes.

“In those ridings, I would empower the riding association to have an open and democratic process for working with the other two parties and ensuring — whichever candidate goes forward carrying the progressive banner — that there’s just one,” Murray said.

“I’m confident that would lead to defeating Stephen Harper.”

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has rejected collaboration with the Liberals, while Green Party leader Elizabeth May has said she supports it.

Murray said she doesn’t expect Mulcair to talk about co-operation in the middle of a Liberal leadership race and denied she’s pinning her hopes on the NDP.

“My hopes are pinned on Canadians — there are 18 million Canadians who didn’t vote Conservative in the last election,” she said.

Murray said she opposed “massive investment in pipeline infrastructure to transport crude oil” to B.C.’s coast — both Enbridge Inc.’s $6.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline proposal and Kinder Morgan’s $4.1-billion proposal to expand its Trans Mountain pipeline.

Murray supports: a carbon tax, the legalization, taxation and regulation of marijuana, shifting taxes to “harms, not goods” and increasing income equality rather than creating greater gaps.

There are nine candidates vying to lead the federal Liberal party: Murray; Garneau; Trudeau; Ottawa lawyer David Bertschi; former Montreal MP Martin Cauchon; Toronto lawyer Deborah Coyne; Toronto lawyer Martha Hall Findlay; retired Canadian Forces Lt.-Col. Karen McCrimmon; and Toronto-based technology lawyer George Takach.

The race concludes April 14.

charnett@timescolonist.com