Editor:
Re: New push to add recyling deposits to milk containers, Sept. 22.
A new tax, on a food item no less.
Supported by sky-is-falling warnings of collapsing recycle depots, evil lobbyists opposing taxes, environmental Armageddon and dubious statistics, another tax is spawned by Metro mayors.
My milk containers go in a blue box with other recycling stuff and is picked up weekly. I don’t drive them to a recycle depot and no deposit is involved. No reason at all why Metro Vancouver can’t do the same.
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan says deposit taxes don’t hurt families. It must be all those other taxes. Guessing an average family uses four jugs of milk a week, this will cost $52 a year extra for food.
At poverty level of $25,000 before income tax, this is disastrous. Above poverty are working poor who live paycheque to paycheque.
Corrigan’s family should be OK. He earns $114,172 plus expenses, and 30 per cent is non-taxable, ’cause he’s a municipal politician. Added to his base pay are incomes for sitting on government boards, etc.
Metro mayors expect us to cut back for new taxes, yet they refused to reduce spending by one per cent, and instead increased gas taxes. They are now fighting a B.C. government plan to create municipal auditors to identify inefficiencies.
Metro and taxpayers are like a couple going bankrupt, where one says “I’m not spending too much, you’re just not earning enough.”
J. Edwards, Surrey
