A public town hall scheduled to be held tonight (Tuesday May 1) has been cancelled over fears of “angry” protests potentially making it unsafe, David Eby announced via Facebook this morning.
The topic of discussion was to be the so-called school tax that was announced in the February B.C. Budget, which is an increase of property tax and Property transfer tax on homes valued at more than $3 million. Eby’s Point Grey riding has seen many of its homes rise above that price, meaning local home owners made wealthy by the rising equity in their homes would have to pay the tax. The NDP said that it would increase the proportion of these taxes that would go towards schools.
In a lengthy Facebook post, the Attorney-General and NDP MLA for Point Grey said that he “thought it would be beneficial to have a community discussion about the school tax, including accurate information about the policy, while giving people a chance to provide feedback directly to government.”
But he said that he began to be concerned when, after the tickets sold out, his opponents and anti-tax groups started encouraging people to attend without tickets.
Eby wrote, “Ads were run by two separate real estate agencies encouraging non-constituents and people without tickets to attend the event. The leader of the BC Liberals personally wrote a letter and distributed it, encouraging individuals to attend ‘whether you have a ticket or not.’
“The final straw was the rescheduling of the protest for “angry” people to “march on in” to the event an hour and a half before the event itself, making it impossible for us to secure the venue in advance… We were no longer able to ensure only those with tickets could attend, which meant we could not ensure safety... If that wasn’t difficult enough, my constituency staff, as well as those identified as supporters of the tax, have now become a personal target of some individuals.
“For the first time in my career of hosting literally hundreds of community events on difficult topics of all kinds, I have decided to postpone the town hall until we can ensure we can hold it safely.”
Eby’s Facebook post was flooded with comments, mostly sharing messages of support.
Read the full Facebook post and comments below.
