Dear Editor:
I read with interest that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation will be launching a legal challenge to force the Canadian government to disclose who stayed in the Corinthia Hotel’s 4,800 pound-per-night “River Suite” last September, as part of the Canadian delegation in London attending Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.
The legal challenge appears to be necessary because the government (for security or some other reason) seems reluctant to provide answers. Rideau Hall has been forthcoming with the information that it was not the Governor General who occupied this suite. So, for the moment, it remains a mystery. Who, who, who could it be? Who could have stayed in that suite which included “complimentary butler service”?
With income tax season upon us, I think it is very appropriate that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is behind this legal challenge. Because sometime over the next month or so you, a Canadian taxpayer, are going to sit down at your kitchen table and work out your income tax. You will pull out that receipt-filled shoe box out of the hall closet, sharpen up a nice new 2H Ticonderoga pencil, and start putting numbers into various boxes on the income tax form, trying to make sense of why you have to calculate 4.7 per cent of the number in line 2500A and then enter this number into line 3500B on Sheet 4 of the form. Good luck.
But while you are working all of this out, dear Canadian taxpayer, consider some other numbers. The room at the Corinthia Hotel cost 4800 pounds a night. Using today’s currency exchange rate, that works out to $7,758 a night. That’s right: 7,758 Canadian dollars per night! The person occupying this suite stayed there for five nights, which brings us to a grand total of $38,790.
That is $38,790 of your money that you will never see again. Now, don’t start thinking that it isn’t really your money. Don’t think for a moment that the money came from your neighbour, or from someone at work, or from the checkout clerk at the local supermarket.
No. No. Think of it this way: the money came right out of your pocket. Someone reached right in and pulled that hard-earned money out of your pocket, and then cynically spent it! Think of how much $38,790 is. What would you do with $38,790? How could you put $38,790 to good use? Pay down the mortgage? University for the kids? House repairs?
And after thinking all of this over, get back to working out your income tax, you poor working stiff. And then ask yourself this: where on earth does this government get the idea it can waste your hard-earned money like that?
P.C. MacDonald
District of North Vancouver
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