Time To End The BC Liberal Dynasty
Oooooh, we’re so scared of the NDP and their nasty, unreformed socialist ways here in B.C. So, we hold our noses and vote, time and again, for the BC Liberals.
I’m done.
Between the HST and jacking up the MSP Premiums, the carbon tax, outright lies during the election campaign, and the blatant disregard for the people of British Columbia during a crippling global recession, I’m finished voting for them.
Let me see … higher taxes, arrogance and deception … sounds an awful lot like Federal Liberals to me.
Obviously I can’t vote for the NDP, but I will not be voting BC Liberal either.
Ever.
I can hear it now from my BC Liberal holdouts, “But Paul, you can’t split the vote and get the NDP elected.”
Too bloody bad. I’m done.
It used to be a decision between socialism or the free market. Now it’s a decision between socialism or arrogance and deception.
I hope that a new party emerges to prevent an NDP victory (or, at the very least, the NDP gets their wits about them and reforms themselves before they get elected and drive this province into the toilet … again).
But I no longer believe we are better off with the current alternative.
Harmonized Sales Tax
The quietest massive policy shift in British Columbia (and Ontario) is underway.
The Harmonized Sales Tax seeks to make tax collecting more efficient by combining the policies for the Federal GST with that of the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) in target jurisdictions. The unfortunate side-effect the B.C. Government has already admitted to is that sales taxes for consumers will go up.
Here are a few other things that they won’t want to talk about:
It’s A Regressive Tax
The obvious one is that, unlike income taxes, sales taxes are “regressive”. That is, the poorer you are, the more costly this tax is to you as a percentage of your income vs. richer Canadians. The reason is that poorer people spend a higher proportion of their income on consuming the very things that the HST will be charged on (richer Canadians have more money to put toward things that do not have a standard sales tax structure: investments, travel abroad, rents and mortgages, education, etc.).
There are good arguments for flat taxes (everyone gets taxed evenly), and good arguments for progressive taxes (the richer pay a higher percentage of their income), but I have yet to hear a good argument for “regressive” taxation. This said, the BC Liberals seem to love them. The highly regressive Medical Services Plan Premium was effectively doubled for most middle-class British Columbians under Gordon Campbell back in 2002; the closer these middle-class British Columbians were to being classified as “poor”, the higher the rate (as a percentage of income).
Bad For Business
Businesses that had to only charge GST previously become less competitive now. There are numerous examples out there, but I’ll offer one more that I am quite familiar with: e-Commerce Services.
This industry only had to charge GST since the very beginning. All this will change next July.
They already compete with GST-free Alberta, not to mention other countries, like National Sales Tax-free America. But this latest move will make B.C. and Ontario-based e-Commerce Services companies even more uncompetitive.
To date, HST has been a non-issue, as Atlantic Canada is hardly a hotbed of e-Commerce. With their long history of HST, setting up a company there would have been a foolish undertaking.
With British Columbia and Ontario joining the HST mix, you can expect to see an exodus of e-Commerce firms, and they will all be heading to Alberta. I have heard this first hand from quite a number of my own competitors in both B.C. and Alberta (of course, nobody will go “on the record”).
An End To Progressive Tax Policy
The BC NDP has pointed out that the provincial government will lose the ability to use the PST to promote green (or any other) policies.
An Election Lie
The BC Liberals were on record as saying that they were not going to implement HST. This message was very clearly laid out prior to, and during the election campaign. Obviously they lied.
The most boring election in history!
Politicians always tell you that this is “the most important election”, then follow it up with something serious sounding like “in a generation” or “since the cold war” or “since James Polk declared 54’40 or fight!”
Please.
I’d like to declare this election in British Columbia “the most boring”, and follow it up with “in the history of the universe”.
This is unfortunate, and it didn’t have to be this way.
There are issues, like, oh, say, the economy. But nobody is proposing anything interesting or colourful enough to care about. The big issues are turning out to be BC Hydro and BC Rail. Wow, dams and railroads – this is cutting edge 19th century stuff people!
If the total lack of inspiration results in low voter turnout, then I hope the BC Liberals and the rest of us enjoy the next 4 years under Premier Carole James.
Because, as any politico will tell you, the NDP is very good at getting out their vote – even when things are exceedingly dull.
I suspect things won’t be that dull once Carole James and her union buddies start running things.
Maybe I’ll have to move to somewhere a little more business-friendly – I hear Venezuela is nice.
B.C. Provincial Election – Your Options
Dammit, I hate BC politics (and I grew up here).
Here are the choices:
- BC Liberals – Reasonably competent people you don’t really like.
- NDP – Completely incompetent people you don’t really like.
- Greens – Presumably incompetent people who don’t like you.
- BC Conservative Party – What? There’s a BC Conservative Party? Yes, barely.
What about STV? I’m voting YES. But only because BC politics is so bloody boring the way it is.
And I’m voting for the BC Liberal candidate in my riding, primarily because the NDP scares the crap out of me.
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