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Reader takes issue with premier's words

The middle class is not as well off as it was in the days when premier was growing up in Burnaby.

Editor: Thank you to Premier Christy Clark (The Times, March 26) for sharing the hard times you grew up with as a child.

I also was a child in a home of six children, and as the oldest, when I found a job, I had to pay my parents room and board to help make ends meet. Did she have to do that?

The middle class in this province is not as well off now as her family was or may have been back then. Her comment about “bringing in taxes without consulting the public doesn’t work well” is comedic.

It was the BC Liberal government that brought in the HST without public consultation, and even worse, it was brought in after the government said “it’s not on our radar.”

It was also the Liberal government that took less than a month to implement the HST but has taken over 18 months to reverse it, after the majority of the B.C. taxpayers voted it out. It is also interesting that the government, in the aftermath of the HST, is increasing taxes on some products such as alcoholic beverages.

Not all of us are able to do what her father did back then, because we, in B.C., are taxed to death. We in B.C., according to the Liberals, who brag that we have the lowest income tax rate in Canada, also have some of the highest taxes on goods and services in Canada.

One balances out the other for the most part, to the point that in fact we are in no better a position than other provinces in Canada. But the bragging sounds so good, doesn’t it?

So thanks again to her for sharing her sad childhood with us. Sad stories, being what they are, are solely for making people feel sorry for the life one had before one decided to make it better.

I believe there a lot of people out there who have had sad lives caused by the Liberals. Many are looking forward to making a decision to make their lives better.

Debbie Atkinson,

Langley