Editor, The News:The Liberals never tire of bullying, threatening and intimidating the citizens of B.C.Finance Minister Colin Hansen has his kick at the electorate, promising the sky will fall and a vote to end the HST will make our lives even more miserable than ever. But as usual, it is just empty threats and doomsday rhetoric, not even a feeble attempt at suggestions of how to fix some of the worst inequities in the HST. My personal experience with the HST has cost me at least three times the projected cost of $300 to $400 dollars a year already, I have, for example, paid $632.80 more just for registered therapeutic massage alone. The reason this tax is so disproportionately unfair is it is so heavily weighted against seniors and sick or disabled people, who are slammed with an extra seven per cent to have a painter or plumber or any trades person do the physical jobs many of us can no longer do.I recently had to do some home renovations and the extra seven per cent added hundreds of dollars to an already expensive task. People were already struggling with our previous onerous tax load, but this 140 per cent tax increase on many of the daily expenses of just living and owning a home, not to mention looking after our health, is too much to absorb. Just what have the people of B.C. gotten out of this giant tax shift: the highest percentage of working poor; the lowest minimum wage in the country; the highest child poverty rate; and the second poorest economical performance of all the provinces in Canada. As far as paying back the $1.6 billion, the Liberals can just tell the federal government to consider the amount another transfer payment to a have-not provinceI certainly do not trust the federal government with control over B.C.’s unique taxation needs. As far as lowering the HST to 10 percent, that does nothing to fix the major flaws in this giant tax shift. This is a clear case of ‘better the devil we know than the devil we don’t.’ I have seen the face of this new devil and it is certainly no friend of mine.Wayne ClarkMaple Ridge