Re: 鈥渟a国际传媒 Hydro shouldn鈥檛 be a social agency,鈥� editorial, Sept. 30.
The editorial correctly focuses on the incapacity of sa国际传媒 Hydro to fulfil the complex role of a social agency.
Adding a compulsory fee to build a fund to permit a social (and needed) intervention turns this Crown corporation further from its mandate as a monopoly provider of an essential service toward a tax-collecting agency. Not good for taxpayers or those who clearly require assistance.
Furthermore, electricity rates are the burden they are in part because sa国际传媒 Hydro must return a 鈥渄ividend鈥� to the Ministry of Finance. To date, to pay the annual dividend, the Crown corporation has had to borrow more than $3 billion over many years.
This dividend obligation turned hydro to the point it would appear that some (too many) of its customers can no longer afford a service for which, by law, there is no other source. Does no one else see the destructive Catch 22 going on here?
Need I mention the $1.3 billion that found its way from the balance sheets of ICBC to the provincial budget to create an appearance of a budget surplus?
Few of us are against taxes, but everyone gets very concerned when deception is used to obscure what is really going on.
The editorial asks the correct questions about another attempt to 鈥渙btain the maximum amount of feathers from a goose with a minimum of hissing鈥� (definition of the art of taxation by a 16th-century finance minister of France).
John Treleaven
Sidney
