Dear editor,
Well, thank you Bill Vander Zalm!
You have just cost this province a couple of billion dollars. Between you and your misguided supporters, we now have about $1.6 billion owing to the federal government and certainly over $500 million owing to restart, rehire and retrain a Provincial Sales Tax department.
What, some of you actually believe that the government doesn’t need the money and the tax would disappear? Give your head a shake! Or did you expect that the government would just cut the public sector salaries, put in a freeze of new government programs and reduce spending on health and education?
I won’t defend the mishandling of the introduction of the HST, but I will strongly defend the fairness, simplicity and economic advantage of this consumer tax. How could not applying the HST to certain businesses such as accountant’s bills, restaurant bills and hairdresser’s bills, and apply it to most other business be fair, but that was the situation prior to the HST.
Under the Liberals, this province has tried to be a business-friendly and internationally competitive area to create jobs and economic prosperity. This vote has gone a long way to hurt the economy of the province.
Now we will have to fork out a couple of billion dollars, we will seriously affect international competitiveness and decrease the efficiency that the one tax was bringing to business. Who’s going to pay for this? All of us, not the government, but you, me and all the other provincial taxpayers.
I can’t fault the people who voted to repeal the HST; they were led down the garden path by the left wing propaganda machine at its worst.
Thank you Bill Vander Zalm and Kathryn Askew! You have done a great job of misleading the general public in thinking that revoking the HST would actually benefit us.
J.M. Presley
Courtenay
