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These are the people from whom the province claws back any additional income obtained from federal benefits and even claws back survivor benefits left them by deceased spouses.

Last September people living with disabilities got a paltry 8.4 per cent increase in benefits from about $906 to $983 a month. That is 10 per cent less than the actual rise in the cost of living over the same period. The already humble standard of living for our most vulnerable citizens has eroded for a decade.

By comparison, members of the legislature had base remuneration increase by more than 40 per cent over the same decade. Add in perks and top-ups and the gap broadens. Not only that, provincial politicians get that automatic pay raise every April Fool’s Day based on any rise in the cost of living index.

A common motif in government rhetoric regarding tax cuts is that it’s providing relief for taxpayers. Implicit in this is the idea that some of us are not taxpayers and therefore presumably don’t deserve the same consideration for relief.

Pure fiction. Everybody who pays rent for shelter, shops in stores, wears clothes, watches TV, turns on the lights to read or takes the bus is a taxpayer. Taxes on these commodities and services may be hidden but they are recovered from users by purveyors. Landlords don’t absorb property taxes, they embed them in rents. TransLink doesn’t absorb fuel taxes, it embeds them in fares. And so on.

So, let’s end this self-serving falsehood that there are taxpayers who are deserving of relief and deadbeats who aren’t.

I, for one, am a taxpayer who would rather these undeservedly punished fellow citizens got relief before I did. How about you?

shume@islandnet.com