Dear Editor:
As the referendum is approaching fast, I have seen more and more effort by the B.C. Liberal government to try to fool British Columbians by slick expensive campaigns and TV ads (costing millions of taxpayers money) with stickmen or big business ads with accountants telling people the HST is good for them.
There are some facts that the ads are not saying: The average B.C. family pays $1,208 per year more in HST not $350 as reported by the government-appointed Independent Panel who presented these calculations based on the assumption that 90% of the HST rebates received by businesses will be passed on to customers in the form of lower prices. The prices in B.C. did not go down under HST.
Funtasia Fairmont Fun Park is a small business in a service sector. Prior to HST we only charged 5% GST and most items we bought for resale were PST exempt, except for some supplies. Our customers got a 7% increase in price because of the implementation of the HST last year.
As a service sector most of our expenditures are labour costs. We cant absorb this 7% increase ourselves and we have no choice but to pass it onto the customer.
We have seen a significant decrease in visitors and their spending power since last year. HST as is hurts tourism, the service sector, small businesses, housing, restaurants and consumers.
HST is attractive to big corporations and will provide profit to them. And they are the ones that are spending millions of dollars on promoting the HST along with the government (the B.C. government is giving $250,000 to business groups to spend promoting HST).
Raising taxes and giving away the sovereignty over taxes collected in this province is a bad deal! and I dont care if you are a Liberal, NDP or anyone else.
710,000 people in B.C. spoke against the HST. I believe in sanity and I have great trust in people. This is our future, the future of our children and our province we are deciding.
It is very important that we have a say in what is going on and that we reclaim our power.
I will vote Yes to extinguish the HST. We must have a hope for a better future. I invite you to co-create it.
Tanya Chovancak
Funtasia Fairmont Fun Park