The province's Education Minister says the NDP is playing politics with allegations that his Ministry is only seismically upgrading schools in Liberal ridings.
Mike Bernier says they have spent $77 million on 14 projects in Greater Victoria and have around eight schools left to go.
“It’s about making the right investments, working with the school districts,” said Bernier. “Victoria has actually been a great school district to work with and we rely on them to bring forward their capital plans submissions and that’s what we work with that.”
Bernier says in the case of Shoreline Middle School, the school district has submitted other schools that are higher on the priority list right now. He added, it makes sense that schools which are currently 100 per cent full capacity would be higher on the priority list.
The Minister was responding to an allegation from B.C. N.D.P. leader John Horgan claiming “the Christy Clark government doesn’t care about schools and child safety in in Greater Victoria and Port Coquitlam, because it isn’t where her election campaign focus is.”
Bernier says it obviously isn’t the case with them recently making the largest announcement of funds in B.C. history at a school in New Westminster which has an NDP MLA now. He also added that it was the Liberal government which first introduced the seismic upgrade program back in 2004/05.