As the old saying goes: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.”
Despite this wisdom from a former U.S. president, there are politicians today who still believe they can somehow defy gravity and expect everyone will swallow their nonsense without question.
Premier John Horgan demonstrated that last week when, a day before the Canada long weekend just as many British Columbians were hitting the highways, he announced a 1½-cent-a-litre fuel tax hike to help pay for transit improvements in Metro Vancouver.
While this will only affect drivers in the lower mainland, it does come on the heels of the province-wide spike in gas taxes when the NDP launched the first of four annual carbon tax increases that went into effect on April 1st. Does he really think people won’t notice?
Around the same time, our Premier was battling Alberta and the federal government over the Kinder Morgan pipeline. He had been summoned to Ottawa by the prime minister to defend his rather bizarre and conflicting court attempts to (a) stop the pipeline and (b) simultaneously ensure that Alberta did not shut off gas shipments to B.C.
During the following press conference, Horgan had this to say about gas prices: “Gas companies seem to be finding ways to take savings out of people’s pockets and I believe they will have to answer to the travelling public.” Our fearless premier then went onto to declare: “I would certainly welcome the federal government to get into the game and protect consumers.”
How dumb does he think we are?
There always comes a time of reckoning when the public has had enough endless tax increases. Someday our premier will have to face up to the fact that you just can’t fool all the people all of the time.
Donna Barnett is the Liberal MLA for the Cariboo-Chilcotin.