CKNW Editorial
for April 27, 2000

George Puil and his Translink will just have to go back to the drawing board. Their $75 impost on all GVRD cars just isn't going to wash nor should it.

Let's for a moment examine user fees. There is certainly a case to be made for them but there is an even stronger case against them in cases like this.

The ordinary user fee, let's take a BC Ferry fare, is a voluntary thing or it is a cost of living or doing business that the user accepts and writes into the home or business budget. The translink impost, hitting the rich and poor alike discriminates against the lower income people. For me the $150 for two cars will not, speaking frankly, be much noticed. For the single parent or the working poor it will be a huge impost and, unlike the ferry, they cannot choose not to pay by abstaining. The Translink impost hits everyone who owns a car irrespective of how often he drives or where he drives. This means that the traveling business person pays a fraction of a cent every time he uses the roads while for the casual driver, the Mom who shops and takes her kids to the Little League game the cost per trip is much higher. And what about the fact that business people will likely be able to write most if not all the expense off on their taxes as a business expense?

The $75 tax is unfair in other ways. We have to accept the fact that were there no Vancouver ... say it wasn't in the equation ... there would be no such tax, So you have to ask, what about the person in Langley that never goes to Vancouver but just drives into Cloverdale each day ... or perhaps drives outside the GVRD and back every day which is not at all unusual?

What is most absurd about this impost is that it hits the person who uses transit the hardest. Now Mr Puil yesterday insisted that the impost was not to encourage the use of Public transit and I, of course, take him at his word. The fact remains, however, that much of the support he has received for this penalty is from environmentalists who see this as a way to discourage the use of the automobile. But if I take the bus to town and back every day, thus reducing the impact on the system, I still pay what amounts  to the penalty of $75. This seems to run contrary to the theory that people should be encouraged to use transit.

Then we have the huge increase in parking. Mr Puil insists that no decision has been made on this but I think we all know politicians well enough to know that if this option for raising money is given, it will, sooner or later be used. I think we can take it as read that we will see a tripling of the PST and the eventual taxation of so-called "free parking. Again this is simply a penalty and will hit the less advantaged the hardest. The single Mom with a couple of kids, who can't possibly go shopping with her kids on a bus, will pay proportionally more than the business person who again can write it off as an expense. The notion that "free parking" should be taxed and that this won't hit the ordinary person is NDP type thinking. Of course it will hit the consumer ... does anyone truly think that Jimmy Pattison will pay the impost on his parking lots at his Save-on stores out of his own pocket? Judging from his answers to me yesterday evidently Mr Puil thinks he will, a naivete I would not have expected from a right winger like our multi jobbed councilor.

There is the broader question - if charging a fee doesn't increase the use of transit - and why should it because far from being an incentive it's a disincentive - why should the people in Greater Vancouver pay for their own highway costs not only as general taxpayers but as penalty payers too, and not the people in Victoria, Kamloops. Prince George and so on. People in those centers and people all around the province pay for a good part of the costs of highways and related costs in the Greater Vancouver area through general taxation, that's true. But Greater Vancouverites pay from roads all over the Province too. Moreover, people from, say, Kamloops use Vancouver roads more than Vancouverites use theirs.

The bottom line, so to speak, is this - we will have a plan and if I read Mr Puil correctly in what he said to me yesterday, some things will be implemented shortly, other things will be implanted in due course if the authorities of that day deem it necessary. I don't think that's good enough. I say to Mr Puil that he should lay the entire plan including the power to increase the PST and free parking lots out in one package - then seek the approval of all citizens of the Greater Vancouver Regional District in a referendum. This is a proposition which even in the preliminary stages, goes to the very root of how we live with each other in the Greater Vancouver area. It is a situation which is tailor made for a referendum. If Mr Puil and Translink are confident in their unanimous decision they should have no qualms whatever in seeking public approval by way of referendum before implementing any of it.

Over to you Mr Puil - I'm sure that you're dedicated to democratic principles and agree that this should go to a district wide vote seeking approval not only for those things you plan to do now but also, in principle, the things you may do like hike the costs of parking and tax the so-called free ones.