Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts Touts Gas Hike To Ensure Metro Vancouver Doesn't Become Los Angeles But, There Are Several Things She Seems To Forget.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts touts gas tax to ensure Metro Vancouver doesn’t ‘become Los Angeles’. Metro Vancouver should act now or face becoming another Los Angeles, choked by cars and smog, says Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts.
“Do we want gridlock and smog? Do we want our region to become [another] Los Angeles? We have a choice to make,” Watts said Wednesday. Watts, whose city is the second largest in the region, was responding to critics of TransLink’s plan to raise the gas tax a further two cents a litre.
If approved, the funds would help create a $40-million annual revenue stream to complete the Evergreen rapid-transit line to Coquitlam, improvements to the road network and 425,000 additional hours of bus service.
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/business/Surrey+Mayor+Watts+touts+ensure+Metro+Vancouver+doesn+become+Angeles/5132351/story.html#ixzz1SlxsmON9

1. Mayor Watts seems to conveniently forget that the government claims to be trying to curb inflation. Higher taxes    =higher prices leads to more consumers going on strike for higher wages. Higher wages=higher costs=higher inflation=demand for higher wages=higher costs=higher inflation=economic, environmental, health, social problems. 
2. She also seems to forget that an increase in the price of gasoline will have a ripple down effect. Taxi companies will seek to increase fares; meaning that many seniors who rely on taxies in order to keep doctors appointments and to enable them to do their grocery and other shopping will no longer be able to do either- meaning higher health costs.
3. Many seniors, already with limited physical mobility and because they can not stand the crowding or wait time; which is a part of travelling by PUBLIC TRANSIT, are pretty much forced to rely on taxi companies.
4. Freight cost will go up. Retail and grocery stores will use this as an excuse to raise prices even higher than they already are.
5. More Canadians will be going across the border in order to buy gasoline and to do their shopping.
6. Cross border shopping increases smog and pollution
7. The Canadian dollars that are going across the border will stay in the United States.
8. Most of our resorts and tourist attractions  can not be reached by public transportation such as the Ever Green or any other rapid-transit line.
9. Our gasoline price is already among the highest in North America.
10. Much of  our clothing, food, and other merchandise already costs twice as much in Canada as it does in the United States.
11. Many people on low income, seniors, and single parents are already prisoners in their own homes, because they can no longer afford to travel or otherwise enjoy our magnificent country. We do not want to go back to a feudal state where everything was owned or controlled by the privileged wealthy. The French developed a very effective method to change that.
12. There are still many places of employment that are only accessible to workers that have a car and that can afford to drive.
13. Many retail outlets (those dealing in furniture or home appliances) are now located on the outskirts of the city and are accessible only by car. Then, after the consumer has made a purchase they must either have a car available in order to get it home-or they must pay often exorbitant delivery charges--for a service that only a few short years ago was free. 
14. More poorly thought out, STUPID, unneeded, taxes only means that many more people will no longer be able to afford to live.
15. Although the government will claim that they have created employment and new jobs, spending money to send out tax rebates(of money that was ours in the first place) just serves to prove that the tax was unneeded. 
16.  Yes, we now have more taxes. We also have more addictions, more crime, more people becoming a financial drain on the rest of society; and more suicides, because people can no longer afford to live- not in B.C. and not in Canada.
17. The most serious problem in the world today, the one problem that most threatens the economy, the environment, and man's very ability to survive is over population. But, we insist on ever increasing our numbers; and we must pay the consequences which include but are not limited to disease, famine, food shortages, fog, gridlock, inflation, smog, and suffering.
18. It is not the high Canadian dollar as compared to U.S. and other currencies  that is the problem. It is the high cost of living and the fact that because of taxes and overpricing our dollar still is not worth ANYTHING in our own country. Tunnel-vision politicians like Ms Watts are only serving to make matters worse.
19.  7 through 13 are all penalties the government has imposed on Canadians for being Canadian and living in Canada and five, fifteen or as high as twenty five percent (seniors and the homeless often are not counted) of Canadians are already living well below the poverty line.Some sources claim that 1 in every 3 or one third of our children are malnourished, because their parents can't afford to both buy groceries and pay the rent. 
20. FEW TOURISTS ARE COMING TO CANADA FROM THE U.S.A. ; MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, IF WE WERE TO REDUCE CANADIAN TAXES AND GIVE ALL TOURISTS THE SAME VALUE THEY FORMALLY RECEIVED, THAT TREND WOULD REVERSE.
21. ANYONE WHO USES PUBLIC TRANSIT TO ANY EXTENT KNOWS; ALL TOO WELL, THAT IT IS TRUE, "YOU JUST CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE.
22. Yes, we really, really, need more taxes and more spending for public transportation. 

How about a 3% tax against their salary for every time a politician shows stupidity in office; a further 5% tax for their spouting off about it; and 14% tax for incurring un-necessary travel expense to do so. 

About a 75% tax (paid by the politicians) on hot-air campaign and other speeches would also greatly reduce smog. A 100% tax(paid by the politician), on useless, strictly "PHOTO OP." travel, might even improve the weather in B.C. this year.

You can not reduce pollution and smog by inhibiting the ability of average citizens to get about and travel but you will greatly reduce it by taxing the HELL out of car manufactures and oil companies that produce inefficient engines and/or fuels while at the same time passing a law prohibiting any increase in costs to the Canadian Consumer.