Dear Editor:
RE: Township combining tourism, economic development into new municipal service corporation, Oct. 2.
This article states that council and staff are excited by the idea of a tourism tax – presumably, due to the fact that it will ensure their wages, as increased work comes with accommodating guests.
However, the lifestyle of the community members living in this town will continue to be changed for the worse. We sacrifice our animal inhabitants for excess construction, our rural farmland for tightly packed residential housing, and our downtown conveniences for our elderly population for tourist shops that sell home necessities at a premium.
We have no right to turn away guests, but we reserve the right to form our town in a way that benefits us. It is our tax dollars funding the maintenance of the necessities of this town. We are not work horses. We will not work for a town that defiles our values of peace and interconnectedness with our environmental resources.
You don’t grow wealth by telling people to come fill their greed with a $14 hotdog or $20 soap. You fuel a way of living that’s focussed on the elite. You create exclusivity and an utter neglect of people whose only wish is to survive another day … or for someone to recognize the injustice taking place.
What you are doing, by fuelling a tourist money-grabbing culture, is redistributing wealth. You are not inventing solutions to poverty. You are encouraging it.
“Buy another hotdog while Mike, who lives in the gorge, loses a foot to frostbite this year. Don’t you deserve to come live within your abundant means? Wouldn’t you like to capture the exact moment you realize you’re not as unfortunate as Mike?” Not that you’ll never be.
The wealth only lasts if you’re the one running the town – the show, I should say. The ones who promise more, with more, with more … so long as there’s a tax on it. A price to pay their wages.
They’ll run this place into the ground and simply move on to the next town to start the whole process over again.
Courtney Pamela,
Elora