Hopefully all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. We took yesterday off to be with our families, so here is our B.C. Monday Morning Quarterback—Tuesday edition! Five things we’re pondering:

1. Metro Vancouver municipal politicians are odd ducks. We spend months—years, actually—hearing many of them demand taxpayers rush in and cover TransLink’s spending deficits with all sorts of proposed taxes and levies. They raise property taxes and transit fares and gas taxes and bridge tolls and parking taxes to cover a shortfall that, now, they can’t properly quantify. They made decisions without proper, independent financial projections. Which leads us to this: a Metro committee ripping TransLink for bad projections. As Jeff Nagel reports, the committee blasted TransLink for:

• Making faulty forecasts
• Overshooting the number of Golden Ears Bridge users
• Failing to realize the 2 cents per litre gas hike would send drivers to Abbotsford and the U.S. to fill up—and cutting into any projected increase in cash flow
• Underestimating the operating cost of the Canada Line
• Underusing the Surrey SkyTrain stations

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan hits it on the head here:

Corrigan said he expects the cuts TransLink will table will be calculated to "drive the public crazy" and put intense pressure on the mayors to cave in and keep the tax hike in place. "It's an end game they're playing, saying 'We dare you to take this money away.'"

They should have listened to us from the start: not another nickel of taxation until a culture of serious, verifiable fiscal responsibility is put in place at TransLink.

2. The carbon tax continues to be a hot topic at the B.C. budget consultations. Here’s a quote from the B.C. Grain Producers Association, who spoke to the committee in Fort St. John:

In 2010, a pilot project measured the annual consumption and cost of energy on five individual grain farms in the B.C. Peace. The total acres of the five farms was 16,600. Divide that by 5, and you get 3,320 acres. Total tonnes of carbon used was 703, and average 140.6. The cost of carbon per tonne is $30, so that equals $1.31 per acre, and the total carbon tax paid was $21,090 for those five farms. That's a breakdown of an average of $4,300 for $49.20. Just to note, a farmer has to grow approximately 15 acres of food crop just for that carbon tax.

We have 325,000 grain, oilseed and pulse acres at $1.31. That's $425,750 annually, and this only reflects the direct cost of the carbon tax.

Increased energy costs due to the carbon tax component puts B.C. grain and oilseed producers at a serious disadvantage to those from the eastern provinces and with other trading partners, as the province of B.C. is the only jurisdiction in Canada to charge this tax.

3. One more carbon tax submission—this time from Arthur Hadland, a farmer and local politician:

I buy approximately $40,000 worth of fuel a year. [Shows bill] This is just one delivery: It was about $7,300 for that one load, and the carbon tax was $534.

You heard the farmers here. We are doing our best already. We do zero till. We do a lot of effective methods for minimizing carbon use.

The next page is my home heating. I don't know if anybody else has presented this. Not only do I pay…. This is for two months. My total bill heating my house…. This is a northern issue. You know, we're talking about a carbon tax. That's a southern policy. It doesn't fit with what we need in the north. Anyhow, my heating bill for this particular time, which was in the coldest part of the winter, was $415, I think. The carbon tax was 56 bucks.

But I will draw your attention to the fact that the HST is charged on the carbon tax, and that was mentioned to you earlier by Roger. And you can't get anybody to change that. We have tried. It's just a damn waste of time.

Anyhow, just looking at that, the cumulative effect is on everything. Everything we transport here is multiplied, so that carbon tax just trips through this economy. It is expensive to live in the north.

I was a little distressed when I heard the Vancouver mayor doing the rah-rah for the carbon tax. I just was not impressed. The rural areas, the northern areas, are net contributors to that whole infrastructure, and here he wants to suck more out of us.

4. It is amusing that a federal government union (the Canadian Association of Professional Employees) is being ripped by its members for waste, not delivering service, lack of transparency, high overhead and lack of a long-term, strategic plan—all things outsiders have been complaining about government unions for years. CAPE president Claude Poirier claims a recent vote by members to stop a $15/month union dues hike—proposed by him—was somehow a slap at Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

“They have no say in what is happening... so this was an occasion, when given a choice, to say no. They can’t say no to jobs cuts or affected letters or being surplused so give them a chance to say no and they did. It’s strange to me to have people attack their own union. They should let Harper and Mr. Poilievre do that and we should be taking care of business.”

Sure, Mr. Poirier: your union spending is all Stephen Harper's fault.

5. Longtime B.C. political blogger Sean Holman is back online with a new blog at www.seanholman.com. Sean moved to Alberta (cursed brain drain!) this summer to teach journalism at Mount Royal University. Looks like his blog will ponder both government and media—two of my favorite topics. Welcome back, Sean!