On the Monday (August 29th) news there were calls for BC Community Living to find money to keep care homes for the developmentally challenged open. Over the weekend there were calls for the government to find the money to open the top two floors at Vernon Jubilee Hospital’s new tower. Earlier this year there was a call to find the $10s of millions needed to build a new hospital on Haida Gwaii.

Calls by BC citizens, the media, the NDP for the government to spend more funds are a daily (or near daily) occurrence.

Yet with media acting as cheer leaders and Mr Vander Zalm, along with Mr Dix (and his NDP), acting as Svengalis – British Columbians voted to extinguish the HST and rip $2.6 to $3 billion out of government coffers over the next three and a half years.

On the heels of the announcement of the results of the vote, completely ignoring (refusing to accept?) the serious financial consequences of extinguishing the HST, British Columbians, the media, the NDP are all back calling for the government to ‘find the money’.

Perhaps, rather than patting themselves on the back or running around thanking people for helping them  extinguish the HST, Mr Vander Zalm and Mr Dix (and his NDP) will finally share with the public what $1.6 billion worth of  health care and education services they want to cut to offset the $1.6 billion repayment (forfeiture) to Ottawa they fought so hard and successfully for? Or the cuts they favour to offset the $1 billion revenue reduction in the first two years of the return to the PST?

Cuts to services, since Mr Vander Zalm, Mr Dix (and his NDP) fought so hard to extinguish the GST because it ‘raised taxes’ so one would not expect them to want to raise taxes to cover these massive revenue shortfalls.

Why speak only of cuts to healthcare and education? Because even drastic actions such as cutting all the gaming grants given to organizations in the province or cutting subsidies to BC Ferries and forcing them to balance their books through service cuts are  simply too small to achieve a re-balancing of the budget without significant reductions in healthcare  services and  education. Healthcare and education being the only budget areas large enough to provide the Hundreds of Millions of Dollars in cuts needed.

Not that I am opposed to making as many smaller cuts as possible to offset the revenue forfeitures Mr Vander Zalm, Mr Dix and the NDP so successfully (and disasterously) fought for.

I am very much in favour of eliminating the government pensions of Mr Vander Zalm, Mr Dix and the NDP as well as cutting the salaries of current NDP MLA’s to $32,667 (1/3 of their current $98,000). Since the behaviour of Mr. Dix and the NDP MLAs clearly demonstrates their outrageous salaries and gold plated pensions have resulted in them being totally out of touch with the economic and financial reality of British Columbia and most British Columbians

The leadership Mr Vander Zalm, Mr Dix and the NDP showed in extinguishing the HST, should be shown in living with the consequences.

It is just unfortunate that those consequences cannot not be limited to Mr Vander Zalm, Mr Dix, the NDP, the media and those British Columbians who voted to extinguish the HST – but will instead fall on, and be suffered by, all British Columbians.