I received a form letter dated Feb. 5 from Steven Emery, administrator, Speculation and Vacancy Tax, requiring all property owners in the taxable regions to complete a declaration.
The tax is designed to ensure that foreign owners and satellite families are fairly contributing to B.C.'s tax system.
I have written to the press and spoken on radio many times on my First Nations viewpoint when it comes to the unresolved issues in this country, how to reconcile with our people, and how government fails to find ways and solutions to right past wrongs.
Where were the First Nations representatives when the province came up with a new tax?
Did they give any forethought to how a First Nation person who purchased land in a "country stolen" would receive the demand to make their land available to a land of immigrants in 2019? Have they learned anything from our past history and how we feel about the land and asking us once again to accommodate with our land (my land)?
If I hear one more time the exemption is in place for native reserves, then I know there is no government body in this country interested in reconciliation. Unless you traded off most of your uninhabited traditional territories, all native reserves are held in trust by the federal government, virtually owned by the government, so does it make any sense for one arm of government to tax another arm of government?
I don't live on a reserve, but if I am subjected to a tax for leaving my home empty then this government has zero interest in reconciling the theft of the land with me and forcing me again to turn it over to immigrants either through rent or selling, or face a fine called a tax.
This is another failure to include our voices and now they will hear my voice on this matter and I wonder how many British Columbians (non-native) feel the Liberals and NDP created this issue when they sat passively while our housing market in these tax regions were used to shore up a weakening economy?
What did they think would happen if they allowed foreign ownership to control the cost of housing and failing to protect a born Canadian this "human right in Canada" based on the cost of living?
They apparently did not learn a lesson from this debacle. The federal and provincial governments continue to sell to foreign governments our industries and farm lands in the prairie provinces. What will happen for Canadians when the cost of all these commodities are a replay of what happened to housing? Government continues to contain and isolate these as singular issues and then they knock on the doors of Canadians to fix their blindness for election points?
Didn't the federal government just purchase a wealthy Texas oil company's pipeline while we still import the finished product?
Who is paying for this? Or this would be a guilt-conscience tax called climate change while we still drill, baby, drill?
What we need is an ongoing report card so Canadians can make an informed decision when they cast their vote. China owns 30 per cent of Site C, so how much of LNG is owned by foreign interests? Hold them all to account instead of letting them sit by passively so it looks good for change every four years.
We all held hope in a young Liberal with a young family to have the experience to relate to Canadians and now we sit with broken promises and some of the most costly decisions to fall to taxpayers.
Like I say in my letters, if I want my home empty as an Indigenous person, this is my inherent right without punitive measures against me. The land was taken once and now government is threatening to tax or fine me for my land because they were complacent when people were screaming in Vancouver to stop the foreign interests spilling billions of dollars into Vancouver.
Jo-Anne Berezanski, elder Lheidli T'enneh First Nation
North Saanich
