The Vancouver Sun’s top columnist, Vaughn Palmer, has a piece today on Premier Christy Clark and the Medical Services Premium (MSP) tax. Here’s the lead:

After a disappointing stab at curbing Medical Services Plan premiums in this year’s budget, Premier Christy Clark nevertheless insists she’s bent on reforming the controversial tax in-all-but-name.

“I am determined to make some more changes to MSP,” Clark said last week, responding to a challenge from longtime crusader against premiums, Jordan Bateman of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“Premier,” Bateman began, “a very wise person once called the medical services premium tax not entirely fair, not logical, antiquated, old, and said the system doesn’t make a lot of sense any more. That wise person, of course, was you in interviews in and around this year’s budget.”

Clark had voiced those disparaging comments about premiums just before the February budget, raising hopes that the B.C. Liberals would begin phasing out the unique-to-B.C. levy.

Instead the government brought in $70 million in relief for children and some low-income families, then imposed a further $147 million boost in overall rates, scarcely a sign that premiums were on the way out.

Back to Bateman: “With the MSP tax having jumped 40 per cent over the past five years and thousands and thousands of British Columbians having to pay more and more every single year, what will you do?”

Clark responded to the anti-tax gadfly by conceding she had said all those things and, moreover, insisting that she still thought the MSP system was antiquated, unfair and did not make a whole lot of sense.

“The things that I said, I still believe them,” she told me during an interview on Voice of B.C. on Shaw TV Thursday. “It’s not progressive. It’s complicated. And it’s another burden that we put on families.”

Then the caveat: “Unfortunately, it’s turned out to be a very complicated thing to try and change, which I guess is why no government has ever done it or never really tried.”

No government in this province, that is. Every other province that had the premiums has gotten rid of them, either by substituting a payroll tax or rolling them into the income tax system.

We’re still pushing on this file. The NDP and Greens have come out with their plans (shifting to income tax and an Ontario-like hybrid, respectively). The BC Liberals have one final budget before the May 9, 2017, election. It’s past time they came forward with their plan.