Ummm Ben, less we forget the election ploy to get the Canfor Mackenzie Sawmill back up and running on the backs of the Canfor Rustad employees. Mackenzie sawmill restart announcement before the election, Rustad sawmill shutdown announcement after. Coincidence?

With respect this is the one time that I must say that I disagree with you Mr. Miesner. The reason being that both of our MLA’s should have bailed out of the liberal party and stayed out until Christy Clark was kicked out of that party. CC wasn’t elected and she was party to selling BC RAIL she wants to sell liquor sails to her friends and while BC is in debt up to it’s ears Christy Clark is shoveling our tax dollars toward advertising her self and her party I could go on but she is on the way out. If Bell and Bond would jump ship now and save BC from another minuit of the Liberal Party.

If I am not mistaken the wood that Rustad used for the last few years was from the other side of Wiliston Lake. This was the reason why they converted to CTL.

When Canfor decided to upgrade a mill might as well eliminate the extra cost of trucking to PG and do the one in MacKenzie, Got Your Severance:)

While I am in general agreement with Ben, I wonder about the wood to China part of the story. If I recall correctly, I believe most softwood exporting nations saw an increase, similar to BC’s percentage increase. All the best wishes to Mr. Bell, and thanks for his efforts.

Well said Ben.

And where was mr. bell in 2010 when the taxpayers were being saddled with the HST? Fact is pat embraced this and refused to do anything for the people who elected him. Pat knew that the majority of people in this riding were against the HST and did nothing but agree with gordon. Good riddance pat. Thanks for standing up for the taxpayers of the north.

If criminals paid the taxes that are due on their income maybe the governments would have the money they need for things like roads, schools, hospitals, ad infinitum.

So I guess a tax cheat will vote for a forger and sky train thief…two peas in a pod.

mattyc

Your best post ever, i for one totally agree with you.

I digress. Too often they are quiet on issues that matter to the average citizens. Having lived in PG, and knowing what kinds of vehicles are driven here, 4x4s, SUVs, etc for safety, they each were silent when we were saddled with a ridiculous carbon tax on our gasoline, which now exceeds .10 per litre.
Shirley Bond is laughable. After running our school board for many years, she stood by idly after school after school after school was shut down. Knowing full well the dynamics of each and every school and the distances between each of those schools. The closure of the schools in the VLA is especially saddening, as those small neighbourhood schools offered a great deal of support to its students. And yes, the carney hill school is now a native school, but what about the non natives in that area.
It is difficult for me to hear the praises of Pat Bell and Shirley Bond when I see how much has been lost under their watch.

With a reduction of thousands of students in the district it is just facings facts that fewer schools are needed to keep costs in line. The Bear Lake school had something like 7 students when the decision was made to close it.Simple mathematics,half empty buildings cost more per student.

mattyc is now creating accounts to agree with his own posts. Sad.

As for Pat Bell and the HST, he supported the HST, which was good tax policy, regardless of what the uninformed mobs were saying. And yes, those uninformed mobs wanted to stick it to the government, so here we sit, going back to the archaic PST/GST while many provinces have a HST or are moving in that direction.

lonesome: “With a reduction of thousands of students in the district it is just facings facts that fewer schools are needed to keep costs in line. The Bear Lake school had something like 7 students when the decision was made to close it.Simple mathematics,half empty buildings cost more per student.”

Bang on. How long are we supposed to keep schools open with single digit enrollments? Bear Lake stayed open for far too long.

Yes, they work very hard for the right wing.

“He gets full credit for the emergence of China as a serious buyer of our soft wood lumber.”

I think this will be remembered as his legacy for BC. Although more locally, I didn’t get the impression that he is for accountable governments in PG public institutions. Perhaps being overshadowed by Shirley Bond’s negative influence and her friends, their interests and being constrained by the machinery of BC Liberals.

He may have worked hard in his riding, but he sure didn’t care about anyone else.

When asked in the legislature by Robin Austin if he would give Terrace the same benefits he gave McKenzie when West Fraser shut down the pulp mill in Kitimat and the sawmill in Terrace, he said no because there was other industry in the town.

Now I don’t know what he meant by other industry as West Fraser had the last sawmill running in Terrace. Didn’t he know that??

Liberal gov. is the most corupt BC. ever had thank god they are on their last share of our tax dollars. If Bell or Bond would just bail out of the shell ship of the lieberals the NDP could get on with bringing BC out of the financial morase it is in.

If the HST was such a “good tax policy” why did the Liberals say they WEREN’T going to have anything to do with it before the last election?

Why, if it was such a “good tax policy”, didn’t they explain all its advantages to the public during the election campaign, instead of denying there were any that would warrant even considering having it?

Could it be from concern that most people just might not agree that it was “good tax policy” for THEM? But then “fearless Leader” and his sychophants always know best, don’t they?

Good point socredible. Many people voted against the HST simply because they didn’t like the way the government rolled it out (and yes, it was done poorly). Now, we get to pay for the return of the PST/GST.

The HST was a far better system. Maybe the NDP will bring it back. I could definitely see them raising the Provincial Sales Tax after the next election claiming the old ‘things were worse than we thought’.

The HST was anti free enterprise. It targeted the surplus value of a small business and not profits, but rather the revenue before profits… it was monopoly capitalist policy designed to put up barriers to new entrants and it was successful in slowing down new small business startups to the slowest level in 40 years… thereby threatening the largest employment creator to subsidize the mega corporations that offshore their profits.

Pat Bell did nothing to help Mackenzie. He was instrumental in privatizing BC Rail, and with CN in control cars were not available to move product and it pushed Mackenzie out of business… Pat Bell created the conditions for the winners and the losers of his choosing and was no champion of free enterprise policy. Pat Bell connived behind the scenes with crony capitalism for his insider friends and got away with it. His mantra was to deregulate any controls that were designed to protect the environment, investments, or public responsibility… he was a neocon bankers best friend.

I think BC will be better off without the likes of Pat Bell and the BC liberals. I just wish he would have faced some real competition in an election and been shown for who he really is.

The HST was a better system only because it was simpler.

But all they had to do was leave the same exemptions as we had under the PST and we would have been quite happy having only 1 tax.

But they couldn’t ‘harmonise’ the two taxes if they’d done that, my2bits. You’d have some things taxable under GST only, and others taxable under HST.

So far as administration goes, the HST does make sense. It is far easier to deal with one sales tax than two, and have them both apply to the same items.

IF Gordon Campbell had actually had the brains many of his supporters attribute him with, he would have reduced the rate of the provincial portion of the HST to 5% when he broadened the number of items it applied to beyond that of the old PST.

That would have made the HST 10% instead of 12%, and the ease of mental calculation alone would have been a selling feature for HST. And all the protests over its implementation would likely have been very short lived ~ for most people don’t understand the finer points on which an argument against HST can be made.

He didn’t do that, and furthermore lied (again) to us when he said that HST would be ‘revenue neutral’. Taking $ 800 million MORE a year out of the pockets of BC consumers ALONE than was removed from BOTH them AND businesses under PST is hardly ‘revenue neutral’.

This province had to waste money on the flip flop on HST/PST/GST because BC people don’t get it. IF something works in Ontario and numerous other places in Canada, shouldn’t it work in BC?

It won’t because the people in BC don’t get it.
Can’t wait to see the taxes those NDP hacks shove up our collective arses.

And corruption. Wait and see Adrian Dix and his ilk.
Prepare for bad times ahead if the NDP get in.

Socredible, we have fuel taxed at 5% not 12%. If it works for that, why not for other things.

I understand that the tax on privately purchased vehicles will remain at 12%, not go back to PST at 7%. What will they call that, PST or HST or just plain rip-off?

I think fuel was exempted because it’s Carbon Taxed, and already taxed Provincially in some other ways, too, my2bits. And Campbell didn’t want to lose the revenue from that.

PG1234, the province had to waste money on the flip-flop because the Liberals didn’t get it. There is an institution called the Legislature, where proposed changes in taxation are supposed to be debated BEFORE they’re enacted.

Not only that, but the Liberals had NO MANDATE from the electorate to even introduce the change to the HST. They specifically said during the previous election campaign they weren’t going to introduce HST, and then, after they’re back in, reversed themselves.

The people who signed the Vander Zalm Petition against the HST, in EVERY riding in the numbers needed, were NOT all NDPers. They were British Columbians who did NOT want this tax ~ period. But some know-it-all Liberals still can’t get that, or how democracy is supposed to work either. We may well quickly hate the NDP if they become government again, but a lot of us will endure that to be rid of this duplicitous, self-serving Liberal government, hopefully for good.

my2bits: My information says that vehicles under a certain price purchased privately will be 7 percent.