You know what helps poor people more than handouts? Being able to earn a better wage for themselves. And you don't get that done by mandating higher wages for the lowest-paying jobs.

You get it done by making it easier for people to do business. Why do people (or at least Mr. Smith) always refer to 'business' as something dirty? Isn't this how we provide 95% of the vital services in our society? The way Mr. Smith has attempted to spin this for his friends in the NDP, one would think that the businesses will be collecting the taxes themselves! Nothing could be farther from the truth: if businesses pay less in tax, they will either spend the extra money in wages, in reducing their prices, or investing the extra returns to create even more employment opportunities as they expand their business. To anyone willing to take an honest, objective look at the HST, it makes sense.

And as an afterthought, where did your old pal Layton stand when Harper announced his GST cuts? Cutting sales taxes benefits the rich. Raising sales taxes benefits the rich. There's no logic, no sense to his words, which is why he will NEVER be PM. The emptiness of a politician's rhetoric is never clearer than when he takes opposites stands on the same issue exactly when it's convenient for him to do so. 

"Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff gave Layton and the federal New Democrats in B.C. a huge gift when he said he wouldn't scrap the HST. "

Vote for someone that is not working for the banks. 

Its fine that he opposes it, but what can he do about it? Nothing. As much as we all hate it, this tax is being shoved down our throats, and there's not a thing that this single dipper can do, or all the entire 30 members of the NDP can do. The "Harper Sales Tax" is coming.

The best we can hope for is a better deal. Perhaps the HST can be exempt from some of the items that the PST will be exempt from.

I think that the candidate who can come up with a coherent way to soften the blow, versus that just being against it, will be the most credible.

The NDP are going to prop up the government now, so their argument is bogus now anyways.  

What can a NDP Member of Parliament do in Ottawa to stop the HST when it's a provincial issue?

Realistically,what will another Dipper be able to do for New Westminster-Coquitlam.
Will he stop the HST?
What about all the other issues in this riding?
Protest MP? Waste of a representative in Ottawa.
No point been on the wrong side of the house when the chances of achieving some clout are better with the side in power. 

The Corporate Politician’s Tale: with Apologies to Geoffrey Chaucer

There once was a virgin named Campbell
Who met an attractive offer to gamble
Now a 1.6 billion dollar HST (Harper Sales Tax) offer
Has led to an STD (Sales Tax Disaster)

Listen all lasses and laddies
To this cautionary tale of political intercourse – sadly
Grits and Tories must share the blame
For their STD (Sales Tax Disaster) shame

The moral is clear
Listener’s dear

Liberals and Tories unite
To impose a consumers’ sales tax that’s not right
So their corporate funders
Will turn a blind eye to their blunders

- Refrain -
Fuddle duddle ho
Harper’s Sales Tax must go
Fuddle duddle hi
Campbell’s caught in another lie
 

Businesses are only responsible to their shareholder - and shareholders want a maximum return on their investment, which means maximum profit. Businesses will take advantage of anything that will increase their profits - like the HST or moving their operations out of Canada. (Witness Sears moving their catalogue call centre to the Phillippines) "We Need Jobs" says "if businesses pay less in tax, they will either spend the extra money in wages, in reducing their prices, or investing the extra returns to create even more employment opportunities as they expand their business." This is what business wants us to think - yes it could happen that way but it's far more likely that the increased profits will flow to foreign investors or high paid executives who don't even pay taxes in Canada or pay for a new factory in India. Unless the government structures tax breaks to businesses so that tax savings have to be used to create Canadian jobs, don't expect that cutting taxes will mean more Canadian jobs
Nice little ditty, Ron1 

Iggy says let no prime minister tear apart a deal made between a premier and a county's leader.
What if we had a different premier and a different prime minister before the tax takes its tole on Canadians in BC?
As I'm certain British Colombians would have no difficulty saying good bye to Campbell's Liberals for good. And your right about the tax breaks to big corporations, now that's the pay off and what its really all about as the Provincal Liberals starve the poor and feed the rich and then share the spoils while British Colombians embellish the lies hoping maybe, just maybe someone is telling the truth. Now if you believe that you'll believe everything the Conservatives have to say as suck it up, its only going to get worst around here, now that is a promise the Provincal Liberals and the Federal Conservatives can get straight. 

"....but what can he do about it? Nothing". The question actually should be, but what would he do it about it? Nothing! 

The PTB have us debating about tax, HST, PST like it is a worthwhile thing to debate. Like debating whether how much abuse and extraction of wealth is permissable.

Tell these lying politicians to pack it in we don't need no stinkin pst, gst or the harmonization of a con job. In fact we did quite well without the GST before that puppet mulroney brought in the banking welfare perks by removing the banking statutory reserves on a stealth week end, North American Fascist Trade Agreement and convinced our leaders to put the prayer rug out to the international financiers and our private bank corporations and fiat us to death with phony money and to put more salt on the wound make sure we continue borrowing money from private banks foreign and domestic, pay them interest and pass the bill to the Canadian people all for globalization another disgustingly polite name for Empire. Offshore empire that is.

When are we going to wake up and demand the truth in every town hall meeting.

Maybe when ordinary Canadians have 30% unemployment and can't feed their families.

Maybe then we will see the home of the Canada brave and free demanding accountability and transparency and the return of the trillions stolen by the complicit means of our leaders, called corporatism, the merging of government with corporations where the lines of checks and balances blur beyond recognition.

But hey you can still vote even though all the mainstream parties have the same body politic to feed the children of the corn, the IMF, BIS and the World Bank.

COMER The Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform is bringing a constitutional challenge to the loan provisions of the Bank of Canada Act, with respect to loans by the Bank to the federal and provincial governments, particularly as it affects and impacts on municipal infrastructures and the governments calculation of “capital” and “debt.”

They are also challenging the Banks secrecy provisions vis-í -vis the interaction and compliance with private international bankers who are not accountable to any government.

As the case is in progress, they cannot comment further on it.

For background information review their Bank of Canada Tutorial. www.comer.org 

For those who disagree: I'll bet you haven't watched Who Killed Canada with Mel Hurtig. Nor studied the implications of the COMER Bank of Canada Tutorial, nor read Michel Chossudovsky's (professor of economics, University of Ottawa) article: Canada's 75 Billion Dollar Bank Bailout. The $64 Billion Federal Budget Deficit is intended to Finance Canada's Chartered Banks.

Please read the article and it will make more sense on how our corrupt government must extract more of our wealth for their elite financier friends. The HST doesn't just happen it's planned years ahead of time.

No Parliamentary Debate at all. “The $700 billion US bank bailout under the Troubled Assets Relief Program, was the object of debate and legislation in the US Congress.

In contrast, in Canada, the granting of 75 billion dollars to Canada's chartered banks was implemented at the height of an election campaign, without duly informing the Canadian public.

Canada's media and financial press bears a responsibility in this regard. The matter was barely mentioned. It passed virtually unnoticed a few days before a federal election.

Media coverage was minimal. There was no parliamentary debate. No discussion, no debate as one would have expected from the opposition parties at the height of an election campaign as well as in its aftermath.

Nobody seemed to have noticed. Most Canadians do not know that there was a 75 billion dollar bailout of Canada's financial institutions.

The decision was casually presented as an effort "to ease the credit crunch" and encourage Canadian banks "to loosen their purse strings and extend more lending to businesses and consumers."

The impact, however, is likely to result in exactly the opposite: the centralization and concentration of financial wealth to the detriment of the real economy.”


While, the bank bailout is a component of government expenditure, it does not constitute a positive spending injection into the real economy.

Quite the opposite. The bailout is a handout to the banks. It contributes to financing the restructuring of the banking system leading to a massive concentration of wealth and centralization of banking power.

The bailout money will be used by Canada's chartered banks to consolidate their position as well as finance the acquisition of several "troubled" financial institutions in the US.

The Destabilization of the Federal Fiscal Structure

This is the most serious public debt crisis in Canadian history.

The bank bailout potentially destabilizes the federal fiscal structure. It leads to a spiraling budget deficit, which must be financed at tax payers expense.”

And John Weston Conservative MP for Sea to Sky tells me there was no banker bailout.

I'm sure it was revenue neutral and that's why we need to have more taxes shoved down our throats because we have ninny spineless leaders who worship the need for our government to have international banker's suck our wealth away under the anthem of Canadiana.

I know I'm preaching to the choir to some of you out there but to those who are just beginning to wake up please go to Youtube and watch Bill Abram.

THE CRIME OF THE CANADIAN BANKING SYSTEM: Bill Abram (part 1) This video needs to go viral it has only about 30,000 views.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Zl1Wax8MI
 

Tell the focking Stevie Harper : Don't tell us how the HST is good for us.

Nothing will be good if we were force to take out our money from our pocket. The money will be use in wrong places for example bonus and salary increment of government employees and contribute to the future budget deficit and at the end selling out the natural resources of our country.
 

The ship sailed on this years ago. This is just more divisiveness to deflect people from the real pathetic mess our so-called democracy is. How many of you HST haters out there were cheering the Olympics being held here? Or didn't recognize after the first year of Campbell that they never had the interests of anyone but their moneyed masters in mind? IF he can have the disregard for people to drink and drive how much do you think he really cares about any of us.
Too bad the provincial NDP don't even have to campaign to win against the Liberals so they won't even have to make any promises to break.