Dear Premier,

I am sure you are overwhelmed with advice and suggestions from political pundits, journalists or lobbyists all paid to bend your mind in their favour, and with little interest in the people and families of BC. Here then are some thoughts from someone who is just a BC resident for you to consider (maybe) in this new year stretching ahead of us.

It is often said that health care costs are becoming too large a part of the provincial (and I suppose federal) budget, and my thought on this is that as you decrease the revenue, by decreasing or eliminating major corporate taxes, then inevitably the health care cost increases (even though in fact relatively meager) become a larger percentage of the decreased available budget. But then so does the cost of each MLA and the attendant staff for them. The point here is that even if health care costs were to remain static, their proportion in a decreasing pie increases upwards. The percentage tells only that there is a falsehood in announcing that health care costs are increasingly too high. No – the pie is being made too small.

I am a simple man without any degrees in economics but I do know that if my expenses outstrip my income I am heading for trouble. In fact I am now old enough that I should be able to survive without having to work, but it appears that I will still be working when I reach 8o simply to be able to eat and pay my MSP premium now increased to $64 per month, thank you. The other alternative is to borrow against the future and that incurs interest on the monies borrowed. This is what BC is doing and foolishly you are paying way too high compounding interest to commercial, probably international, banks instead of using the Bank of Canada. In fact you have told municipalities which borrowing organizations they should use have you not? and they do not include the Bank of Canada.

How often I have heard politicians of all stripes saying we have to lower or eliminate corporate taxes to invite investment in our country or province, and that to me is absurd. We have resources that the world needs and people who can and will work hard. I say to those corporations: “Come and get them and pay a fair share for them”. We have water we are giving away to resource developments which will poison our headwaters and eventually all our rivers, aquafers and lakes and then what will we use to drink and to irrigate our farms? But by then all our water will be owned and controlled by French companies through CETA ( and you had better believe they will not allow free access to “their” water for hydraulic fracturing for instance) , but we will still have the same problem and that is: how do you get around a toxic water supply?

It would seem to me that any company wishing to invest in a province would like to know foremost that the province is financially sound not going broke, and able to provide the manpower and services they will require. It is said that if you build a better mouse trap the world will buy it, in the same way BC can and should be a place where being a partner in prosperity for ALL is a requirement, not just a place that allows itself to be plundered for the sake of a dollar or two profit to outsiders.

Everything stems from a healthy budget which in turn means healthy revenues from ALL participants in our province not just the working stiffs.

Ms. Clark, the Bank of Canada was designed to help the Federal and Provincial governments and even the municipalities to avoid the high compounding interest of the commercial banks you are using now to cover your budgetary shortfalls. I recommend that you use the Bank of Canada to benefit us all today and help us establish a financially strong and vibrant BC for our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Your so called “work plan” seems to revolve around drilling, digging or “fracking” things from the ground and shipping the result along with raw logs to Asia and that really does us a lot of good doesn’t it? How about manufacturing some things Ms. Clark? We used to do that once and used B C people to do it . Now we only use people to dig and cut and then to ship raw materials overseas just so we can get those loaded container ships sent back here again with those same raw materials changed into cheaply made goods as it shows in your TV ads. Shouldn’t we be sending those containers back loaded with BC made products?

The BC Green plan is and always was a double standard and simply a Campbell/Liberal con game. If you add a carbon tax on fuels, and then use that tax to promote coal, gold and copper mines, as well as oil and gas exploration – including drilling in the Georgia Straight and up through the Charlottes ! – all of which are many times more carbon intensive and destructive than automotive fuels then there is an obvious self-defeating effect. With your tax exemptions and subsidies to the resource sector this carbon tax is paid for largely by the people who have to use cars because public transport is soo poor everywhere except perhaps Vancouver. Everyone knows that a certain amount of carbon is necessary for healthy forests and plant life and for healthy oceans. It is the commercial excesses and by products that are the main problem along with their attending toxic gasses and liquids. The fact is Ms. Clark that the only real beneficiaries of carbon taxes are corporations such as Goldman Sachs who corner the market in carbon futures and make a financial fortune without producing or doing anything of value. Surely you understand that the unproductive oil futures are what causes the price at the pumps and heating fuels to be so high? What we really need is a pollution tax exempted from any futures plan. So let’s have a REAL Green plan, not some flimflam mumbo jumbo.

Finally, Ms. Clark, Premier of BC, the biggest capital that BC has is not in the ground, but is above it in the form of the people of BC.

We are BC.

We are the past, present and future of BC and until politicians such as yourself not only recognize that but act upon it, BC has little of real value to offer the country or the world except to be open to the exploitation of our resources.

It’s not rocket science Ms Clarke, but rather common sense, which seems to have but little value today in the Canadian political worlds.

Please instead of expensive American and Harper style attack ads against your opponents, why not concentrate on BC and our real problems and fix them. That in itself would serve you much better in the eyes of those whose votes you are seeking. We are all tired of attack ads which indicate we are fearful children unable to think for ourselves.

Jeremy