To the editor:
Re: B.C. Premier Christy Clark and the Prosperity Fund. The proposal outlined in the throne speech is worthy of at least a debate in the election, but it’s not new—it’s a copy of the Alberta Heritage Fund. Except the B.C. version is really full of flatulence in the form of “natural gas.”
Most commodity analysts are warning about over-production and lower prices for natural gas, so the premier can’t really project the potential profits for one year, let alone 30 years.
Nice try. I predict it will be a bag of hot air flying off into the sky after the May 2013 election. Such a fund needs more concrete planning and financing.
How many decades will wealthy corporations stick around once provincial government gets its handle on the “golden elbow” valve taxing the elbow of the “smelly gas” pipeline on its way to western ports for Asia? The prosperity fund scheme has a special smell “odeur politique”—smells great at first then diminishes to a less than immaculate body stench.
Too many questions, too few answers.
Why lower sales taxes? Just to imitate Alberta? Sales taxes are a progressive tax; lower income taxes is a better idea.
How about meeting current hospital needs now ( i.e. Penticton and Vernon, Nelson and Trail) so they won’t have to wait a decade for natural gas revenues?
The whole project is a smelly diversionary tactic prior to the B.C. provincial election in May, three months away.
In reality, prices for natural gas are set much higher in Asia, but that is absolutely no guarantee that the profit spread between B.C. and Asia prices will generate profits for B.C. or the corporations who own and operate the pipelines and drill for B.C.’s natural gas.
I will be the end user and Asia (China and Japan) will make the profits, and not our province.
John O. Powell,
Kelowna
