Beginning last Monday up to May 29, residents of Metro Vancouver are being bombarded by feel good messages urging them to go vote and tax themselves. Our message to our friends and the general public: Just say no.
This is nothing more than a financial scam that will trigger bigger infrastructure expenditures way into the future. Sales taxes in British Colombia are one of the most onerous since these are linear cascading taxation.
What Translink essentially did was conjure a problem that has not occurred, initiate a fear-mongering campaign and collect the money in advance to solve a perceived problem. It’s nothing more than a public relations stunt.
There is also a huge problem with the process because taxes are collected under a general fund. The prospect of the provincial government dipping its dirty hands into this blood money is possible as it does the same with excess funds from ICBC and BC Hydro. These utilities, in turn, are allowed to raise rates resulting in indirect taxation.
According to their marketing ploy, the 0.5 percent increase in provincial sales tax will translate into $125 per household while the provincial government raises the minimum wage by mere 0.20 cents.
Translink Skytrain. Photo by Bert Morelos.
Of the projected $7.5 billion that will be raised by this scheme, only 6 percent will go to congestion alleviation projects while 13 percent or an estimated $97.5 million will go to the construction of a Patullo Bridge replacement. The rest of the money, according to data compiled by the Financial Post, will support an urban sprawl with a rapid transit project up to Langley. It will make the land in this corridor expensive when currently it is dirt cheap.
The plan if implemented will also trigger other cash grabs like raising vehicle registration fees which is projected to generate $100 million, consolidation of the carbon tax now imposed on fuel purchases which is expected to net $360 million, a so-called land value capture that will net $10 million, and a new mobility tax designed to generate tax money based on the distance travelled rather than on fuel used.
At some distant future, the plan is to finally impose a road tax, similar to Singapore, on roads built with your own tax money.
Translink already collects a portion of the gas pump price as the government tax on this commodity is estimated at 0.48 cents per liter. They also collect a portion of property taxes, about $150 per household, as a subsidy.
Finally, Translink as a brand is toxic. At one point, it positioned itself before the courts as a private enterprise. It lost. It is also profligate in its largely hidden executive perks. Translink is the only corporation in the world that maintains its own police force — when there is clearly no need — simply to go after toonie fare evaders. One can already deduce the idiotic guiding mind behind this scheme. The cost of maintaining an expensive police force and the cost of fares are a financial mismatch and is clearly the reason why it feeds on subsidy.
Just say NO.
