The letter to the editor that appeared in today’s Guardian Newspaper was in promotion of wood as a less expensive, practical and cleaner heating source. It was hailed in the letter as the best candidate to be exempted from the dreaded HST.
To this point the minister of finance has only excluded heating oil from this new Tax. Propane-wood-pellets and electricity are all taxable at the new rate of 14%. Minister Sheridan uses the excuse that taxing heating oil would impact the poor and low income. Wow he is really a smart and a perceptive guy eh!!!! He states that 90% of people use oil as their prime heating source, (he is probably correct). However it seems to me 100% of people use electricity, and if you don’t have electricity how will your oil fired furnace work, how will your pellet stove work, or the fan in your wood stove. That’s before we even consider all the other essential appliances to which we have become accustom . What about Hospitals??? don’t they depend a great deal on electricity. If Minister Sheridan was concerned with low income families surely electricity would be the obvious choice to exempt. Oil is expensive, it is dangerous, polluting and not a renewable source. Cutting oil lines on private property to steal oil is a fast growing crime and a pollution disaster to the victims . Home owner insurance is a higher risk insurance rate when oil is used, Oil tanks are very expensive and must be either inside or regularly replaced. Does any of this make a reasonable argument to exempt oil from the HST rather than Electricity?????
Then again, has anything this government have done lately make much sense???? Certainly to a vast and rapidly growing segment of our Island population, it doesn’t
God Bless and keep reading
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