MLA Foster Says People Will Be Pleased With HST - Pete McIntyre

The MLA for Vernon Monashee has made up his mind how he'll be voting on the HST.

The legislation for the new 12 percent blended tax was tabled in Victoria today and Liberal Eric Foster says he's 100 percent in support.

The rookie MLA from Lumby calls it the single biggest thing the government can do to boost BC economy.

"We've been told that by business, by the economists, small business, large business. People are behind this and it's a good thing to do. It will work out well, and at the end of the day, people are going to be pleased with it."

N-D-P leader Carole James has vowed to fight the tax every step of the way, hinting her party may try to filibuster the bill.

Former premier Bill Vander Zalm is also heading a group collecting names on a petition to try and block it.

James blasted the government today in Victoria for dropping a provincial tax tax exemption on energy-saving appliances and subjecting those goods to the higher H-S-T.

Finance Minister Colin Hansen says low income people will get rebates on the H-S-T, and the legislation also includes a seven per cent rebate on motor fuels, books, children's clothing and footwear, car seats and diapers.

The HST will blend the five per cent GST with the seven per cent provincial levy, creating a single 12-per-cent tax that will apply to a much wider array of goods and services.

The new tax would take effect July 1.

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Saying no to HST? - by Castanet Staff
Mar 29, 2010 / 5:28 pm

The Lakeside Resort's ballroom in Penticton was packed Sunday for the HST Rally.

The rally was lead by former B.C. Premier Bill Vander Zalm.

He spoke for 35 minutes, saying all political persuasions are working together to keep the HST out of B.C.

“Whether your NDP, Liberal or Conservative, Green Party, it doesn't matter. We are coming together because we are beginning to recognize and we must act upon it, that democracy is gone and we don't have democracy,” says Vander Zalm.

He says the HST will cost British Columbians $500 each annually.

Provincial conservative leader Chris Delaney says the HST is not a done deal.

“For anyone out there who's telling you 'this is a done deal, the HST is coming in on July 1, you guys are wasting your time, don't bother,' they don't understand what it is we're doing. We are going to repeal the tax.

The HST Rally relocated to Osoyoos for Sunday afternoon.
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Castanet HST Poll

Castanet:

Poll Results

Question: Do you plan on signing the anti-HST petition?

Yes

2227 - 87%

No

334 = 13%

Total Votes: 2561

Posted by Don Quixote at 3/30/2010 2 comments

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Texas agency sued over Canadian whooping crane deaths

Canada's most endangered species is at the centre of a U.S. legal battle after 23 whooping cranes from a Canadian national park — nearly 10 per cent of the last natural flock in existence — died of starvation last winter in Texas due to alleged mismanagement of freshwater flows by a state agency.

The Texas-based Aransas Project, a coalition of conservation groups, has filed notice of a lawsuit against the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality citing "illegal harm and harassment" of the cranes from Wood Buffalo National Park as a result of industrial and municipal water diversions from the Guadalupe River that allegedly robbed the birds of crucial food supplies during the winter of 2008-09.

The coalition, including the International Crane Foundation, claims the restricted flow of the river into San Antonio Bay, in southeastern Texas, on the heels of a recent drought affected salinity levels in Gulf estuaries. They say the salinity levels disrupted a delicate ecological balance and caused a steep decline in the availability of blue crabs and wolfberries — key food sources for the wintering cranes.

State wildlife officers reported the worst whooping crane death toll in decades last spring, describing emaciated and "ratty" birds so exhausted and malnourished some didn't take flight from approaching humans.

Of the 270 specimens that arrived in Texas in the fall of 2008, only 247 survivors were seen heading back to Canada in the spring. Normally just one or two birds is lost during the winter season.

"There is strong evidence that the problems experienced by the whooping cranes are directly caused by the permit programs of the TCEQ that allow too much water to be taken from the Guadalupe River Basin, especially during lower flow conditions," the Aransas Project stated this week in announcing the lawsuit.

"The cranes provide us with an early warning system of the overall health of these coastal ecosystems," said Aransas Project regional director Ron Outen. "But we should remember that the whooping crane is the most recognizable endangered species in the world. Mismanagement of water in the Guadalupe River Basin is destroying the winter habitat of these magnificent birds — and killing them."

North America's tallest bird, the whooping crane's population was down to 22 known specimens in 1941, prompting a joint U.S.-Canada recovery effort that has become a global model for species conservation.

Still, there are fewer than 300 cranes in the world's only wild population, which nests in summer at Wood Buffalo — a UNESCO World Heritage Site straddling the Alberta-Northwest Territories border — before flying 4,000 kilometres to winter feeding and breeding grounds in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

The only other surviving members of the species belong to two separate populations with about 250 individuals in total — a captive flock in Florida and a Wisconsin-based migratory flock trained to follow an ultralight aircraft to Florida each winter as part of a unique, Canadian-led recovery project.

The Texas environment commission has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit notice. A spokesperson for the Austin-based agency said this week that an ongoing water-management review begun in 2007 "will enhance our ability to protect wildlife dependent on these flows."

A 2009 planning document at the TCEQ website, which describes the whooping crane as an "iconic" creature dependent on careful water management, acknowledges that "environmental flows, which include flows in rivers and streams and freshwater inflows to bays and estuaries, have not been addressed uniformly in water development project planning and permitting in Texas."

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