Alex Loves the Carbuncle Tax... NOT!
OPEN LETTER TO PREMIER--FROM A FRIEND
Dear Gordon:
I know what you’re thinking…here’s Alex again trying to tell me how to do my job…
Well, it seems that you’re having some problems, notwithstanding a twelve point lead in the polls that could easily evaporate by next year, so, I thought, being the generous fellow I am, I’d pitch in and offer some advice. After all, you won’t answer specific questions about your pals Ken Dobell, Pat Kinsella and Mark Jiles; and refuse to address easily answerable questions regarding the Basi-Virk trial; dismiss the very serious problems over at the Ministry of Children and Families and largely disregard the press..
Ergo, let’s give you a hand…
I haven’t had to do this since your temporary insanity over giving away the Musqueam Golf Course, but, more to the point…this Carbon Tax of yours is sheer lunacy.
While China and the United States continue to spew unending streams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, you, apparently, rather than pushing for real solutions through massive technological advance want, instead, to punish the hardest working British Columbians for the eco-crimes of major world polluters, who hide behind several layers of bureaucrats, and incomprehensible, self-serving rhetoric. It’s similar to the way you have protected larger industrial polluters in this province from environmental accountability.
What you are doing with this ridiculous ‘B.C. Carbon Tax’ is a kin to sending a jaywalker to death row because a given murderer had a magnificent lawyer. Worse yet, it puts you in the company of some of the greatest buffoons and hypocrites in the climate change cauldron of alarmists: Al Gore, Stephane Dion, David Suzuki, Elizabeth May. God help you, Premier!
China, the world’s biggest C02 emitter, builds a coal-burning plant every six days (you should know, BC sells China huge reserves of coal every year) and the Chinese people purchase 20,000 cars per day. The good ‘ole Excited States of Amnesia boasts roughly 5% of the world’s population but consume 30% of the world’s resources. If our entire country adopted the intellectually fraudulent Kyoto Protocol and achieved the fantasy targets, we could only accomplish such a miracle by shutting down every plane, train, automobile, home and office building—for seven years straight, and even then our contribution to reducing global C02 levels would be negligible.
I was astonished to read those nuggets of wisdom two years ago. You might know the columnist. His name is Michael Campbell (he’s always been one of my favorites, but don’t tell anybody).
Forget that crude prices are nudging $150 per barrel, ignore that we are looking as if we will become bridesmaid to America’s-Next-Top-Economic-Crisis, why the hell would you burden the working stiff in this province with yet another tax? We’re taxed to death in this country, having you pile on and mind-numbingly declare revenue neutrality, is, for lack of a better word, nuts. The $100 you sent me went into my gas tank—thanks by the way…would you like to bet that’s the way it was for a majority of BCers?
Up-province, they are already paying as much as 20% more in energy costs than those in the Lower Mainland and travel twice as far to get to work. What do you say, Gord, to the carpenter from Revelstoke, with a wife working a double-shift at a local diner, both of whom pay into a mortgage and car payments, and still find time to raise three kids? They’re lucky to meet each other once a day for half an hour on the downside of a marriage doomed. Believe me, they don’t need the additional hit at the pump, even if it cumulatively amounts to ‘only’ four bags of groceries per year.
But do you remember them?
These are the people that you promised to protect…and those few little words ‘BC Carbon Tax’ keep them awake at night almost as much as the next three words keep me awake at night…
PREMIER CAROLE JAMES.
I bet you’re sleeping just fine though Gord…
For now…
