Carbon tax in budget

By GERRY WARNER

Townsman Staff

February 21st, 2008

Columbia River – Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald didn’t find much to praise in Campbell’s budget.  “Once you have a look through it and examine it closely there’s not much there.  In terms of carbon, what you have is essentially a gas tax and as far as the $100 cheques go it’s our money.”

Macdonald says the budget also includes big tax cuts for the banking industry.  “The bands aren’t doing poorly so I find that a strange thing to put forward as part of a revenue-neutral plan.”

The carbon tax, which will go up in succeeding years, will also be hard on rural BC which has little in the way of public transit to offset driving and where distances are too long for walking unlike the crowded cities of the Lower Mainland, Macdonald says.

There was nothing in the budget to reduce child poverty and homelessness or to provide affordable housing.  Nor was there any aid for the hard-hit forest industry or funds to increase policing and to improve child-care services, Macdonald says.

Seniors were forgotten in the budget and don’t seem to have any priority with the Campbell government.  And the approach to reducing green house gasses is somewhat cynical, Macdonald says.