I was in disbelief as I read Haley Ritchie’s article, “Squamish votes to ask the provincial government to implement motor fuel tax.” in the Thursday, Oct. 11 edition of the Chief about the desire to implement yet another tax on our already overburdened municipal citizens.
Here we have an outgoing council and mayor requesting more taxation be imposed on a population that is already being taxed past the breaking point.
The article went on to say that motorists in the Vancouver area are paying a 17 cent TransLink tax and a 6.75 cent dedicated motor fuel tax as well as the other existing taxes currently levied on fuel.
The article then pointed out quite correctly that while we here in Squamish do not pay the 17 cent TransLink tax, our gas prices are very close to those charged at the pumps in the city. We’ve all wondered how ‘they’ can get away with that. We are being gouged, and we all know it. We already seem to be paying some sort of extra tax, buried in the price we pay at the pumps and have been paying it all along.
I don’t know where this money is going, but if we are in need of funding for a transit system in the corridor, it should be taken out of the amount we are already paying. Whether it’s the fuel companies gouging because they think drivers from the city won’t know the difference as they head to the ski hills, and drivers here in Squamish are too dumb to know the difference, or if that extra we are already paying is, in fact, being siphoned off into some government purse.
The fact remains we are already paying too much and cannot afford more taxing, period.
It is so typical of the political and bureaucratic mind to continue to reach ever deeper into our pockets without care or consideration of the impact on those of us who are struggling day to day to make ends meet.
Requesting another tax that will make the cost of living here go even higher is both appalling and mind-boggling. The funding needed is already being collected and just needs to be applied in the right places.
-Doug Brubacher
Squamish
