...On Sparkle Ponies.
From today's Aug 13th column in The Province:
...British Columbia's accumulated debt stands at $56 billion, and the government expects it to go even higher before the natural-gas miracle makes it all disappear. According to the government's June budget update, the debt is scheduled to hit nearly $70 billion by 2016, which would then leave only 12 years for Clark to achieve a herculean task that would make even Hercules nervous.
How to sop up all that red ink? The government says it will use revenue from proposed liquefied natural gas exports to create a $100-billion "Prosperity Fund" that would wipe out the debt forever.
But how can that happen without taxing the nascent LNG sector to the hilt? And exactly how big is that tax bill going to be anyway? That's what big oil-and-gas companies want to know before they decide to invest here.
"Those details need to emerge," Andy Calitz, vice-president of Shell-led LNG Canada, told the Wall Street Journal last week.
"We need to know with certainty about the level and the stability of that (tax issue) by 2014."...
Hmmmmm....
Given that this issue was fully in play two months ago, I've just got to ask (because I'm just so sanctimonious and whiny)...
Why the heckfire wasn't this column written on May 13th?
(assuming, of course, that the good Mr. Smyth doesn't have to get his Lotuslandian political info, and his cups of courage, from the pages of the WSJ)
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Wondering about all that was truly most sparkly and ponylicious (and also unquestioned) back in the day?....Well.....This.
And, don't know about you, but I could have sworn I heard the newly-minted Snooklandian Minister for Advanced Education tell Ms. Gretzinger that he could quite literally see fields and fields full of non-existent job training programs from his house on the MoCo this morning.
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4 comments:
Have to agree with you Ross- why didn`t Smyth bring this up during the election.
MSM- failure.
Chuck--
Well...
I guess it could be argued that the Wall Street Journal wasn't onto the story back then.
Therefore, according to a certain logic, it was a non-story pre-election.
Or some such bizarre thing.
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Shell et al should be happy to help out as they have been on a subsidized ride up to date. Fully on the backs of BC taxpayers and in most cases choose outside services over local business and residents. But when they get used to thinking they shouldn't have to pay for a public resource why would they want to pay.
BC Liberals - manufacturing crisis $1Billion at a time.
"Gosh, look at all this debt that we've accumulated through absolutely no fault of ours... guess we'll have to sell, Sell, SELL all the publicly owned assets to pay for it. Dang, those NDP sure mismanaged the economy."
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