Five communities in the Columbia River-Revelstoke riding have been battered by “chaos” caused by the Liberal government thanks to the HST, noted riding MLA Norm Macdonald (pictured) in the Provincial Legislature Nov. 21.

“Here it is almost three years later, and I think everybody would have to be struck by the mess that this government made when they decided to deceive British Columbians with the HST. It’s a mess,” Macdonald said, adding, “One more example of that is with resort municipality agreements which are in place with 12 local governments, including five in Columbia River–Revelstoke. The bungled implementation of the HST inadvertently wiped out the funding mechanism for these agreements. A grant system is being used as a stopgap. But as the government very slowly reinstates our PST, resort communities want assurance that we will also return to the pre-existing resort municipality funding mechanism. Can the Minister of Finance give that assurance today in the Legislature?”

Minister of Finance and Deputy Premier Kevin Falcon replied, “Mr. Speaker, I may get the member to repeat the question. I thought he was going down another track, and I’m not sure that I caught the gist of it.  What I can tell the member that he might find interesting is, you know, housing starts.  Particularly in the member’s area, he should be concerned. We’re all concerned about a slowdown in housing activity. What is interesting to me though is that coming out of the worst economic downturn we’ve seen in at least 60 years around the world in the late ’09, in 2010 we saw housing starts return to more than 26,000. We’re currently forecast to see an increase this year. A modest increase, but nevertheless an increase.

“I think what is interesting to me is that during the decade of the 90s when we saw global economic growth and we saw the President of the United States, President Clinton, balance the budget and we saw generally good times right across North America, amazingly enough, in British Columbia housing starts fell 66 percent. That is a really unfortunate testament to what happens when you have that kind of government in power,” Falcon concluded.

Macdonald said in a press release that he was disappointed by Falcon’s response.

Noting that Falcon “chose to not even listen to the question that has such serious impacts on rural resort communities, choosing instead to opine about historical housing starts,” Macdonald pointed out that “wasn’t the only serious misstep made by the minister. Earlier in Question Period, Minister Falcon referred to the PST, a tax he supported before the election and the tax the majority of British Columbians prefer, as a ‘stupid’ tax.

“The people of B.C. were clear that they rejected the B.C. Liberals’ HST, but instead of taking the direction of the electorate, Minister Falcon thinks he can get away with basically calling the electorate names.  It was a pretty sad showing for the B.C. Liberals in the Legislature today,” he said.

Macdonald added that is also disappointing how the Liberals are handling the return back from the HST.

“Three months after the referendum vote against the HST, the BC Liberals are still unable to provide a clear timeline for the changeover nor any clarity on how the changeover will occur,” he said.

Macdonald also raised the concerns of resort municipalities who lost their funding stream when the HST was so hastily implemented.

The communities in the riding that qualified for resort municipality status are: Radium Hot Springs, Invermere/Panorama, Kimberley, Golden and Revelstoke.

e-KNOW

Article Share