Re: Call for sales tax elimination on Hydro bills for pulp mills
I’m a bit taken aback by efforts to further reduce the share of taxes paid into our provincial budget by industry. Who is going to pay the difference?
Local electric ratepayers are faced with increasingly high bills with an alarming number of low income people and families being cut off by BC Hydro on a daily basis. Our government is already shifting revenue generation from taxation to fees and I do not think more of the same is the way to go.
Medical services premiums; BC Hydro rates and fees; ferry rates; driver’s licence fees; ICBC rates etc. Everywhere one turns, there’s another provincial agency or Crown corp. with its hand out demanding payment where a progressive tax system used to provide service.
Our kids were charged for school buses last year and who knows how long the reprieve will last. Next election? The carbon tax was supposed to be revenue neutral, but low income people have not received an increase in benefits in years. Real income for many has, in fact, gone down.
Every time “we” demand lower taxes the provincial government increases a fee or decreases a service in response. Children in care, seniors on pension, disabled folk and injured folk pay the price. People are discharged from hospital into shelters, psychiatric patients are discharged without even that support and the constantly hungry are told to pay their bills and go to the food bank, the churches, and the soup kitchens.
Go Fund Me campaigns are the opportunities for the popular poor, while the unpalatable panhandlers are reviled by passing motorists for daring to beg in the streets.
Is this really the society we wish to live in? One that sacrifices children and the elderly to allow some to avoid repaying a portion of what they earn from the resources of our province?
I hope not.
Keith Simmonds
Duncan
