Aug 18, 2001, 4:05pm

So I just came back from the US/Canada border after picking up a purchase I made at Amazon.com and I of course had to visit the Canada Customs building.

A lot of things in this country make me feel like a slave, a serf if you will, to the various levels of government we have here. From the hours I have to spend each month dealing with all the red tape my business has to do, to the big, fat cheques I have to write every 3 months for GST remission to the Feds, it's all bad. And the worse part is, every year there are more fees, more levys, more user-fees (these names are used so the govts can avoid using the word "tax") all come into play but we get less and less service from our money.

All these things are bad, but nothing makes me feel more like a slave to the government (in a literal sense here - I'm not speaking figuratively) than my border trips. The questions asked, the almost complete lack of any rights, and of course, the opening of your wallet to pay a myriad of taxes, fees, levies, duties, et cetera.

I grudgingly accept paying my income taxes. I barely accept paying GST and PST on goods and services purchased in Canada. GST is a hard enough pill to swallow because the feds have lied to us about it since its inception. First, it was supposed to go to paying down our national debt. Nope, just a general revenue stream. Next, the Liberals said they would abolish GST if they were elected in 1994. Well, they were, but GST is still here. And we pay it on everything. Overnight in Canada, everything was 7% more in price. All goods and services. And Canadians like good little sheep meekly accept it. But each year we seem to receive less and less for our monies headed towards Ottawa. Heath care in Canada is a complete joke with multi-month long waiting lists for critical surgeries, and year long or longer waits for not so critical operations. People are turned away from Emergency rooms. And here in BC, I pay more monthly out of my own pocket for my "CareCard" than some of my American friends do for Blue Cross coverage in the States. Isn't our massive tax load supposed to mean that health care is "free"? Gee, the nearly $40 a month minimum I have to pay for heath services each month, plus the ding in the wallet I seem to get everytime I visit the doctor for some fee "not covered by health services" seems to contradict this.

Fact is, we are slaves to the governments, especially the Federal level, and all it takes is one trip to the border to see what I mean. Why I should be paying GST on a product I buy from the US is beyond me. Regardless of its used or new status. The govts didn’t have their roads damaged by trucks moving this product in Canada. They didn't have to pay Workers Comp benefits for any employees hurt in a building housing these goods in Canada, because there wasn't any. They didn’t pay for regulatory testing for this specific product. Hell, the product isn't even warrantied in Canada. The Canadian government spent 0 dollars on this product, or service but because we are their serfs, their slaves, we must pay.

And you know what is worse? The product I bought also had 8.3% Wash. State tax.

And Canada Customs made me pay GST and PST on that $ amount on top of the product cost.

I'm really starting to hate the way this country is governed. As a student of history, there aren't many philisophical differences between how our lives are being managed and run by the Feds, and how rich landowners ruled the lives of their serfs on their farms back in the middle ages. In Canada we work for the various levels of governments for over half the year once you factor in all the taxes and fees and levies and duties and hidden taxes etc etc in all the products and services we buy or rent or use. By comparison, the US "tax free" day, the day the average US citizen stops working for the government is in early May. Things have to change soon.

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Mixelania

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