Vancouver Voters Turn Down Tax Grab to Pay for Feds Immigration Follies
Without a halt to immigration, there can be little Improvement in traffic gridlock. Results announced July 2 showed that voters in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia said a resounding “No” to a proposed .5% sales tax increase to pay for a planned $7.5-billion improvement of the region’s wretched transportation infrastructure. It would have “included a major east-west subway line across Vancouver, a light rail network for Surrey extending to Langley, a replacement bridge across the Fraser River, 11 new rapid bus lines in the suburbs, and a third harbour ferry.” (Globe and Mail, July 2, 2015) The 700,000 voters who sent in their ballots voted 62% against this planned cash grab.
Almost unmentioned in the debate was the key cause of the worsening traffic gridlock — mass immigration. Forty years of failure to improve transportation infrastructure and 25 years of mass immigration have crowded Vancouver and Toronto to the bursting point. There is no point spending more local money in a futile attempt to catch up if the federal government insists on importing masses of immigrants, mostly from the Third World, in these times of high unemployment.
If the Federal Government wants to import 265,000 plus immigrants a year, they must bear the cost — in the tens of billions of dollars — to improve the infrastructure stressed by the decisions they’ve imposed.