Way to penalize the green initiatives

I didn't find any online links to this story, but on French CBC radio tonight, I heard about something that was too silly not to blog about.

Vancouver has a car co-op that allows 3,000 members to share the use of approximately 170 vehicles. The cars are parked in designated areas in the city, members can call the co-op or reserve a vehicle online for a given date and time. The co-op is a great initiative to get vehicles off the roads and to provide affordable access to wheels for those who might not be able to afford owning a vehicle (or don't want to bother). For short trips in the city, the co-op is a lot cheaper than renting from car rental companies. I'm not a member of the co-op, but Lara was, Typhanie was and Gerri still is.

Well, apparently, the BC government thinks the co-op should have charged its members a vehicle rental tax and since it hasn't for the past three years, is now asking the not-for-profit company for $300,000.

For a government that launched a big "green cities" program back in 2006 to "get British-Columbians out of their vehicles", this is not very smart. Car sharing is as good an initiative as buying hybrids (which doesn't reduce traffic or the energy and materials consumed to make the car) or promoting public transit. In the news report, a representative from the co-op emphasized how they were a non-profit and could not afford to pay this large sum (all the money they make is reinvested in the cars they own, either to buy new ones or maintain the existing fleet).

Someone wasn't thinking...