Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues, for allowing this to continue. Mr. Speaker, I would like to weigh in on this driver’s licence plate issue quickly, especially because it is such an important topic and it has been raised today in various perspectives.
Mr. Speaker, a number of my constituents are concerned about the $10 fee. To the Minister that may not be a big deal, but as I understand it, there are 18,000 passenger vehicles on the road today and that is just the passenger vehicles, mind you. Of course, people are now forced to pay the $10 fee. It shouldn’t be described as anything else because the option is either have your vehicle on the road or not have your vehicle on the road, so I think people made substantial investments. This can’t be really seen as anything but a cash grab.
I am just trying to understand. If I can compare playground investment in camp parks, we don’t raise camp fees. When we are forced to upgrade our health care cards recently to a modern one, we weren’t charged a fee there, and finally airport improvements, when we do those, we are not charged extra fees when we put an airport in. Why did the Minister feel that it was necessary to charge an additional fee of $10 regardless of how small it may appear to be? Why did the Minister feel that it is an important direction to start charging those types of fees when what truly is the responsibility of the government and we are already paying for it in our road licence fee that we do update every year? Thank you.