HST, why we need it!

Everybody hates paying taxes, but can I argue that continuing the fight against HST will be shooting ourself into our feet.

Let me explain on this controversial statement...

Since the birth of British Columbia, we have been blessed by natural resources. As our population increases, expenses increases accordingly. For years, we could cope with these increases in expenditures by cutting down more trees, extracting more coal and pumping out more natural gas. You can see the latest province revenues break down here (look at page 12).

We have been relying on the golden hens for too long! Would it be possible that, Bill Vander Zalm, a former BC premier, who is fighting vigorously HST, might not see that our province can't apply the same strategy as before?

In 2010, we have to deal with climate change, ecosystem collapsing like the pine beetle epidemic. Our government is so desperate for source of revenues that he is approving projects like Fish Lake, transforming a healthy trout lake into a toxic tailing ponds, in order to produce gold and copper for 20 years only. After, that period, we will have no lake, no fish, no jobs and no revenues for the province, until we find the next project to continue our auto-destruction.

I agree that there were a lot of hypocrisy with how the Liberals brought the new taxes. HST magically just appeared after the election at the same time that our finance suddenly collapsed. Furthermore, I recognize that I don't see any indication that our BC government has the intention to transition away from a resource based economy in the short term.

Nevertheless, killing the HST right now will make it impossible to come back in the future, as we almost lost the carbon tax in the last election. I believe that it is a painful but necessary step towards a transition away from a resource based economy. In Québec, we paid for years an extra 7-9% on top of GST and this started in 1992. If you have the chance to visit this province, you will probably notice that small restaurants are still opened and people still buy bicycles.

Since July 1st, we have to pay more for dinning out and other services. I prefer that the BC government receives money from "Alfredo pasta" than relying a royalties from coal extraction to pay for my education and health care.