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Back to Bateman: “With the MSP tax having jumped 40 per cent over the past five years and thousands and thousands of British Columbians having to pay more and more every single year, what will you do?”

Clark responded to the anti-tax gadfly by conceding she had said all those things and, moreover, insisting that she still thought the MSP system was antiquated, unfair and did not make a whole lot of sense.

“The things that I said, I still believe them,” she told me during an interview on Voice of B.C. on Shaw TV Thursday. “It’s not progressive. It’s complicated. And it’s another burden that we put on families.”

Then the caveat: “Unfortunately, it’s turned out to be a very complicated thing to try and change, which I guess is why no government has ever done it or never really tried.”

No government in this province, that is. Every other province that had the premiums has gotten rid of them, either by substituting a payroll tax or rolling them into the income tax system.

But as Clark noted, one of the challenges here in B.C. is that many working people don’t actually pay them. Rather, premiums are paid by their employers as part of labour contracts or other terms of employment, albeit as a taxable benefit.

“This is one of the complications,” said the premier. “You’re talking about large employers. If we were to roll all of it into the tax system, none of those large employers would pay anymore.”

Moreover the increased income tax burden could be considerable. Thanks to multiple hikes under the B.C. Liberals, premiums now bring in $2.5 billion a year, roughly a third of the total amount collected by the province income tax.