By Lucy-Claire Saunders

USUALLY A $500 gift from the government is welcomed with large smiles and open arms. But not this time. Not for Joginder Mander.

The retired Surrey sawmill worker, along with his wife and three children, have sent their carbon tax refunds back to Victoria.

"It’s not fair," says Mander, 59. "Why are they sending us a cheque for $100 each while raising prices for everything else?"

The carbon tax — a provincial tax on carbon-based fuels including gasoline, diesel, natural gas and home heating fuel — will rise $5 a tonne for the next four years until it hits $30 per tonne in 2012.

To soften the economic blow to British Columbians, the government gave a $100 climate action dividend to each resident at the end of June.

Mander says the government is handing out a pittance with one hand and raking in the dough with the other.

"Obviously the government has a surplus in order to give us the money, so why don’t they just cut taxes and lower prices?" asks Mander. "The carbon tax doesn’t just affect the price of gas for my car. It affects the price of food, clothing, electricity and natural gas."

Because of the carbon tax, diesel prices in B.C. are now three times higher than in Alberta and almost twice as much as prices in other provinces.

The trucking industry will carry an excessive portion of the tax load, says B.C. Trucking Association president Paul Landry.

"Many of our (trucking) companies involved in the forest industry are struggling to pass on the costs for transportation because the forest industry is also stressed out financially," Landry told the Asian Pacific Post. "It’s a false premise for anybody to believe that you can increase the cost of business by simply passing it on to someone else."

Landry says the average long-haul owner-operator will pay $1,000 in carbon taxes in 2008, about $3,000 in 2010, and $6,000 in 2012, driving up the cost of any good requiring transport.

B.C.’s taxi industry faces a similar dilemna.

"I do not hesitate to say the taxi industry is suffering much more than other community members," says B.C. Taxi Association president Mohan Kang. "The carbon tax has been implemented when the price of gas is already too high."

On June 11, the Passenger Transportation Board, which regulates service vehicles like taxis, ordered a temporary fuel surcharge of 3.5 per cent to be passed on to passengers to help taxis manage higher fuel prices.

But given the huge spike in oil prices in recent months, Sam Kuuluvainen, manager for the Prince George Taxi Association, says the passenger surcharge is a mere a drop in the bucket.

"The fact that gasoline went up from a dollar to $1.40 in a very short time, isn’t that insensitive enough to conserve?," he says. "What’s the extra 2.5/litre cents for?"

Will the carbon tax actually encourage people to conserve when it already costs $100 to fill a tank? For many drivers in Metro Vancouver, that’s exactly where the $100 rebate is going — into the gas tank.

But not for Mander.

"Really, all you are doing is putting the average taxpayer into poverty," he wrote, in the four-page letter he stapled to the cheques he returned to Premier Gordon Campbell.