Are Lower Mainland Residents Getting Ripped Off With Tolls?

Categorized | David Murray, Provincial Politics

Columns: Are Lower Mainland Residents Getting Ripped Off With Tolls?

Posted on 17 November 2012
Tags: BC Liberals, chilliwack, Golden Ears Briidge, Langley, Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, Port Mann Bridge, Rail for the Valley

By David Murray. I was very upset today to read that the new Port Mann Bridge project is going to cost up to and perhaps more than four billion dollars.
The cost of this project has spiraled to the point of craziness ! With 600,000 people projected to move into this area by 2040, it will not take much time at all for the cars to be choking us all again trying to get over this piece of infrastructure.
This project will not help reduce carbon or reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Are we still going to keep repeating the same mistake Los Angeles did in the 1930′s and 40′s by getting rid of their rapid transit system? This moved help oil and automobile companies only, and created smog emissions that were some of the worst in the world in the 1970′s and 80s in that city.
It only would seem to make sense that we should have built “Rail for the Valley” http://www.railforthevalley.com/. This project would have cost about 25% of what the bill for the Port Mann project has worked out to be. In 2011 the cost for Rail for the Valley was estimated at around 1 billion dollars.
From 1900-1950 with the original tracks still in place (we would have to replace some of the tracks obviously-but at a fraction of what it cost for the Port Mann project) we used to have an inter-urban train running from Chilliwack to Vancouver.
It would have been a better idea to resurrect this project . A Chilliwack to Vancouver train. It would have created hub communities all along the route much like the Skytrain has done in Metro Town and other areas.
Sustainable communities where people could work, play and live. Also with the ability to choose not to get in their car to travel to Vancouver.
I realize that politics is politics. The BC Liberals are needing something to help with their popularity at the moment. If they charged what Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge & Langley residents have to so they can cross the Golden Ears Bridge a resounding $4.00 per trip. They would likely not win many seats in the Fraser Valley. I feel ripped off that they came up with $1.50 per trip to cross the new bridge. Why could they have not done that for our communities? They said they were losing money for the first year? Why did they not give this same discount? It truly seems wrong.
I am glad for the commuters on the other side of the river are getting this break , but how about for the same duration offer the deal for the Golden Ears Bridge?

Did You Know That Income Tax Was Supposed To Be A Temporary Measure in 1917

Federal Politics: Did You Know That Income Tax Was Supposed To Be A Temporary Measure in 1917

Posted on 18 July 2011
Tags: BNA act, Income Tax, King George V, Prime Minister Borden, Royal Assent, WW1, WW2

Submitted by Helen Witt: Did you know that in 1917, Canada brought in Income Tax as a “temporary measure” to help pay for Canada’s involvement in World War 1.
From, before its birth, as a so-called nation, in 1867, the people who invented Canada decided that the provincial legislatures and not the federal parliament of Canada would have “exclusive jurisdiction” to make laws with respect to “direct taxation’ within the province.
“Income tax” was then considered, and continues to be considered, by economists and legal scholars, to be a “direct tax”.

This division of legislative powers was enshrined in Canada’s first constitutional document, the British North America Act, which divided legislative powers between the provincial legislatures and the federal parliament.
In the First World War, WW1, Canada’s Federal Government, charged with responsibility for national defence found itself without adequate funds to fight the war and brought in Canada’s first tax on incomes. All the legal scholars of the day, the judges, the lawyers and the politicians, knew that “income tax” was a “direct tax” and, therefore, outside the taxation powers of the federal parliament during peacetime.
So, the Government of Canada, under the leadership of Robert Borden, introduced the Income War Tax Act using its powers under the British North America Act to make laws for the purpose of national defence and, considering that Canada was fighting a war on behalf of England, the Governor General, as the representative of King George V of England, , was only too happy to provide Royal Assent to the legislation, on behalf of King George V, who was also the King of Canada at a time when Canada was still an official colony of England.
Click here to view Government of Canada web site confirming the Income War Tax Act received Royal Assent on September 20, 1917. cas-ncr-nter03.cas-satj.gc.ca/portal/page/portal/tcc-cci_Eng/About/Full_history
This issue of Royal Assent is important because a law, passed by Canada’s Parliament, is not legal unless it receives Royal Assent and, if you keep reading the above web site and other web sites like it, you will not find any refrence to the date when Royal Assent was provided for the Income Tax Act, 1948, the law that replaced the Income War Tax Act, 1917. The absence to any reference to the date Royal Assent was given for the Income Tax Act 1948 is evidence supporting the view that no Royal Assent was ever provided – otherwise, the Government would be sure to publish it.

After the First World War, when the war debt was paid, there were repeated calls, in parliament and elsewhere, for the federal government to repeal the Income War Tax Act because it was illegal, the war effort was over and the war debt was paid.

However, the Government class had grown, in size and in power, and the citizens’ calls for a return to constitutional values were ignored.
Also, the Second World War, WW2, came along, England and Germany resumed their family quarrel, Canada, again, sent its young men off to die for God and country, and the Income War Tax Act, passed in 1917, continued in force to fund
the second war effort.