Product Information Department wrote: > > At 09:16 AM 3/6/99 -0800, Kirby wrote: > > Personally a fee like this wouldn't bother me. Outfitters should be levied a > > fee for using our resources. I do have some reservations as to the price, > > I think it should be lower than the CDN$25.00 [per year] mentioned. > > What do people think about this? > I have to accept it principle in order to be logically consistent: I try to > act like a "real" boat when I'm at sea and get indignant when other boats > ignore the rules of the road and "cut me off". [snip] > > > I also think an extra levy should be set on foreign companies > > coming into the country also. > I like the idea in principle-there are several American companies who bring > their own kayaks and paying customers into Canada, but I'm not sure a > separate rate for non-Canadian companies would withstand a NAFTA challenge. [snip] Most communities regard the "economic benefit" from tourism as sufficient to override the demands tourists place on the local public safety apparatus: fire control, police protection, Coast Guard, rescue personnel, etc. In addition, many provinces and states tax tourists through a sales tax, in part to exact a tribute from transient tourists. [Oregon does not have a sales tax, but we are weird!] That said, I'd willingly pay my share of any provincial or national service fee/boat tax, what-have-you, in Canada, Mexico, or anyplace else ... IF the money went toward supporting my activity: sea kayaking. Yeah, sure, we get rescued (rarely, and at generally little expense), but by far the most costly item here or in any other locality except the bush is ... water access! Yup. That boat ramp or that city or county park where you slide into the water. Talk to the folks who are in charge of the local parks system about the cost of portapotties, trash pickup, ramp maintenance, and so forth. Support for parks is so poor in my county, that the State had to conduct an audit of the County because the County was not using pass-through State money properly -- they shuffled it away from paying for winter portapotty service! (Picture a busy boat ramp at an isolated location without a portapotty for four months: hepatitis, hepatitis! Excavating for a mine!) Even in remote areas of BC, water access can be problematical, with access roads maintained by voodoo and the midnight bulldozer, I think -- who pays for that? In addition, how much of the revenue from timber taken under a Timber License actually gets used to support recreation? I suspect the revenue stream from a "yak tax" of CDN$25/boat/year is negligible. Sounds like an annoyance tax to me. But, I'd pay it willingly, if ... -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR happy Oregon taxpayer *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Mar 08 1999 - 22:14:28 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:05 PDT