We have every right to oppose this wasteful transit tax
Advocacy: Taxpayers Federation based in Regina, but has deep roots in B.C.
In public life, you soon learn to take criticism as a kind of backhanded compliment to your effectiveness. So it was naturally gratifying to open Monday’s Sun where Stephen Hume shredded the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), my professional home for the past few years. (Vancouver Sun, Feb. 2: Anti-tax group has hijacked transit debate; Pressure group: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, based in Regina, has no legitimate say in transit plebiscite)
Our sin this time is our decision to launch NoTransLinkTax. ca — to campaign for a No vote in the upcoming Metro Vancouver plebiscite on the mayors’ proposal to raise the provincial sales tax to provide more money for TransLink.
As Hume’s column explains, our board of directors are its members, and we don’t disclose the identity of our supporters without their permission. But this is common practice. A Statistics Canada study reports that 86,178 of 161,227 not-for-profits and charities are organized in much the same way as the CTF. Where it comes to their corporate organizational structure and protecting the privacy of their supporters and their financial donors, both the David Suzuki Foundation and Greenpeace share a similar approach to the CTF.
Both Greenpeace and the Suzuki foundation have managed to play a role in the TransLink tax debate without being denounced as fanatical, secretive Prairie oysters.
Hume points out that Gregor Robertson had nearly as many supporters in last November’s election — 83,529 — as we claim in all of Canada.
We should thank Hume for bringing up last November’s election. Gregor Robertson managed to get through that election without once disclosing his plan to raise the PST. It’s the same story with the other 17 mayors who voted to raise the PST after the election. That’s going to be an issue.
Yes, Mayor Robertson’s supporters live here, Hume reminds us. “You’d think Metro residents were staggering under intolerable taxes and about to be crushed by yet another … yet competitiveness studies show that after Alberta we enjoy the second lowest provincial tax in Canada. Our sales tax is lower than all but two provinces — and would retain that rank even with the proposed transit increase. Corporate tax rates here are second lowest in Canada. Small corporations enjoy a tax rate 20 per cent lower than Alberta’s.
“Here.” “We.” “Our.” “Residential taxes in Metro are lower than in Victoria.”
But Stephen Hume doesn’t live in Metro Vancouver. He lives in Victoria — North Saanich, actually. And Hume is wrong: factor in MSP and TransLink taxes, and it’s clear that Metro Vancouver residents carry a heavy, growing tax burden.
Our B.C. director, Jordan Bateman, should take even more comfort than me from Monday’s hatchet job. Jordan actually lives in Metro Vancouver. He pays the toll to use the Port Mann Bridge. He pays the 22 cents a litre in gas tax directed to TransLink to drive his family’s minivan. He pays the 21-per-cent parking tax to TransLink when he parks it. He and his wife paid $146.19 this year in TransLink property tax on their Langley house, and they pay $1.80 each month to TransLink on their BC Hydro bill.
Stephen Hume’s decision to work for The Vancouver Sun and live on Vancouver Island makes some financial sense. His housing costs are lower and he avoids a lot of taxes that Jordan and I can’t. But choosing to describe himself as one of us? We’d have to call that a stretch. The CTF’s B.C. roots run deep — as deep as our commitment to lower taxes and fighting government waste.
Jordan arrived in Metro Vancouver via Grace Hospital in 1976 and he’s lived here ever since. I got an inkling of his nuisance potential reading his first opinion piece in the Langley Times column in 1992.
In the late 1940s, my grandfather and father returned from the Second World War and built a motel on the King George Highway in Surrey. I grew up in Langley and I wrote over 1,000 columns in the Sun before moving on to the CTF.
And while the CTF may have been founded in Regina, its president, Troy Lanigan, has lived in B.C. for most of his 47 years.
Five thousand CTF supporters in Metro Vancouver also have deep roots in B.C. and a stake in the outcome of this referendum. So do 3,000 others who have signed on to NoTransLinkTax.ca.
I talked to Jordan as I worked on this piece. He said the CTF won’t be on the ballot in the plebiscite in March. He said we should take the flak and move on. “This vote is about standing up for people who are paying too much in tax and seeing it frittered away by TransLink,” he reminded me.
It made good Prairie common sense.