EDITOR,
I liked being a barber a lot better before I became a substantial tax collector. I also liked being a barber a lot better before my trade was subject to Gordon Campbell's Privatize and Deregulate strategy. Currently, there are no standards for licensing or sanitation in the cosmetology industry, or as my erstwhile unlicensed competition in Alberta put it, "B.C. is the only province in Canada where you don't need a licence."
In literature, and sometimes Westerns, the barber is the archetypical character who delivers the common-sense lines of "everyman." Any story with a deregulated, tax-collecting barber would clearly indicate a farce -at best, a comedy, which would explain why going to this HST referendum seems more like going to a poker game, with no discussion and only one card on the table.
The trouble with farce is that its attendant absurdities distract us from matters that need our attention. Did anyone notice that our "majority" Conservative government cut funding to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans the same week that a consortium of scientists issued a "dire warning that one-third of life in the oceans is facing extinction unless we act NOW?" Or were we distracted by the absurdity of our government advertizing to sell us on an (even at 10 per cent) exorbitant tax on products and services in our society? I almost missed the irony, while wondering why the federal government is so interested in buying into a blanket tax. Distraction.
Either way, speaking now as the "barber," unless we direct our elected representatives in government firmly away from the absurd and the spin, we are surely setting the stage for grave tragedy.
Julie Malcolm
Brackendale
