Editor, The News:
Highest gas prices in North America.
I must ask the premier and the local NDP MLAs if the current exorbitant gas prices are part of a plan to financially squeeze private citizens and businesses to the point of misery? To what end?
I don’t know, perhaps to appease your Green political partner, Andrew Weaver, who would have us spend $75,000 on a new Tesla – and the world’s warming problem would be solved?
Mr. Weaver does proudly boast about ‘not even knowing the price of gas at the pump,’ being an electric car owner. Yes, we can see that he is certainly not in touch with the realities of most middle class in B.C.
To a large degree, I blame the NDP for the current fuel prices. The ongoing (frivolous, in my view) political obstruction of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, sending damaging signals to the marketplace about the government’s capriciousness, the escalating carbon tax (adding more tax on top of tax), seeming indifference to household costs and to the need for expanding (not restricting) local refinery capacity to serve the ever increasing needs of the B.C. motoring public.
This is a made-in-B.C. problem that does not exist elsewhere. It is a problem affecting us all here.
Need I remind the local MLAs that the constituents here in’ suburbia’ are predominantly car commuters who actually admit to personal car use, to get themselves to work on weekdays, to the grocery store, to the soccer pitch or local ski hills on weekends, or about B.C. for summer vacations.
Mobility is a cornerstone of our economic health and it’s being adversely affected as more and more of our household income goes to fuel at the expense of other activities.
Rick Halas
Maple Ridge
