DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (Hansard)- Thursday, February 21, 2008
View Hansard video clip: Question Period - J. Horgan (system requirements)
J. Horgan: It's a tragedy that the "minister of defence" either lives in the 1990s or the 2020s. The rest of us are living in 2008, and our constituents want to know how it is that a government on that side of the House can say it's fair to give $500 million to their corporate backers. The banks, last year alone - $110,000 to the B.C. Liberal Party. And for that they get a $200 million tax cut.
How can you square that with the people in our communities, the people that don't have transit options, the people that can't go to Maui to warm up in the winter? How do you say to them that taxing them more for their carbon is fair when everyone else in the corporate sector is getting away with it?
Hon. M. de Jong: Sadly, if I were, as the member suggests, living in the 1990s, I'd probably be looking for work.
I'm glad the member actually took advantage of the opportunity to get involved in this debate. I'm always glad when the member from Juan de Fuca gets involved. It allows us to juxtapose the position he seems to have been taking.... He has been speaking out against this initiative where other members, his critic included, have been speaking out for it.
Can they get coordinated, Mr. Speaker? Can the leader stand up and lead? Can she lead a caucus to this point, where they can stand up and tell British Columbians where they stand on this budget? We know where we stand.
We stand foursquare in favour of ensuring that British Columbians, low-income and middle-income earners, pay the lowest income tax in all of Canada. And actually, we stand for something else. They've dismissed this, but we stand in favour of providing British Columbians with a climate change dividend in June in advance of the tax coming into effect. That's the right thing to do, and we stand in favour of it.
Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.
J. Horgan: I want to know again how it is that giving Jimmy Pattison a hundred bucks is somehow a progressive policy in this province. I can't understand that - how the Premier can give himself a 70 percent raise and then take another hundred bucks out of the purse on the way to the door.
My question is to the "minister of defence" again. He didn't answer the first question from the Leader of the Opposition. He hasn't answered a question since we started today.
How do you explain to people who don't have transit options - to people who are waiting in the northeast sector, to people waiting on Vancouver Island for transit options - that you're going to give away 500 million bucks just like that, and we're letting them pay more for their petrol because they don't have any options? How do you square that?
Hon. M. de Jong: I must confess.... There's an ever-moving target on the other side of the House. That's not unusual. I'm referred to comments that the previous questioner from Vancouver-Hastings made allegedly...
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Members.
Hon. M. de Jong: ...yesterday on the radio. "So we support a revenue-neutral position. Much of this" - referring to the budget - "is absolutely revenue-neutral."
Interjections.
Hon. M. de Jong: I understand that the opposition leader is desperate at a time when British Columbians are increasingly tuning her and her party out. Maybe that's because they no longer - if they ever did - have any sense of what the NDP stands for, because they refuse to stand in this place and take a clear position. We saw it in the fall.
Mr. Speaker: Wrap it up, Minister.
Hon. M. de Jong: We saw it on the Gateway project, we saw it on the Port Mann Bridge, we saw it on treaties, and sadly, we're seeing it again today on the budget.
