Promised billions?

Your editorial about BC liquified natural gas,  A Taxing Negotiation (Sept. 29) says the BC Premier, Minister of Finance and Minister of Energy "may have good explanations for what looks like double taxation on a particular industry."
They do - it's political! - but we'll never hear it from them.
Natural gas royalties have plummeted under their watch, while production levels have increased dramatically. [In 2012 Marc Lee, in an analysis for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, noted that: "As a share of provincial GDP, royalties were 1.13% in 2005/06, but have fallen to just 0.07% of GDP in 2012/13. On a per capita basis, royalties fell from $458 per British Columbian to just $34 over the same time period."]
If LNG plants are permitted to recover their billions in costs before paying even the "extra tax" you wonder about, it seems unlikely that the exporters will ever have to pay it, and even more unlikely that the Premier's promise of "billions" to the provincial treasury will ever be realized.


The section in italics was excised in the version printed in the Globe and Mail on October 1, 2014