OSOYOOS TIMES-September 15, 2010

By Paul Everest – Osoyoos Times

British Columbians will be going to the polls one year from now to help decide the fate of the controversial harmonized sales tax.
On Sept. 13, the Standing Committee on Legislative Initiatives decided that B.C. residents will have their say on whether the provincial government should get rid of the HST through a referendum to take place on Sept. 24, 2011.
Following a successful anti-HST campaign led by former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm in which roughly 500,000 British Columbians gave their signatures to a petition calling for the tax to be repealed, the committee was tasked with either recommending that a draft bill to extinguish the HST be tabled in the provincial Legislature or referring the matter back to the provincial chief electoral officer for an “initiative vote.”
Boundary-Similkameen MLA John Slater, who sits on the committee along with five other Liberal MLAs and four NDP MLAs, said the committee discussed the matter for two hours on Sept. 13 before opting for the initiative vote choice.
He said the committee faced two options when it came to an initiative vote.
The first was a mail-out campaign where a referendum question on the HST would be sent out to all B.C. households.
This option would cost roughly $12 million.
The second option, which the committee chose and will cost the province roughly $30 million, is to have polling stations where people would answer a referendum-style question.
Slater said he preferred this option because there will be less of a chance for people participating in the vote to misunderstand the question.
If the question is mailed out, he said, and the wording is vague, people may not know what it is they’re being asked.
A polling station would let people ask questions of those officials running the stations, allowing for more informed choices to be made when a person checks off a ballot, Slater said.
He also said that even though the polling station option will cost $30 million, it’s expected that the provincial government will save that much money this year by not having to deal with administration costs from the now-defunct provincial sales tax.
The NDP members of the committee wanted to send the matter to the provincial Legislature as early as this fall, Slater added.
But he said he did not want to go that route because the issue would then be “ram-rodded” through the political process while inaccurate information about the tax is still circulating in the public realm.
The NDP and Vander Zalm’s Fight HST campaign don’t have any alternatives to the tax, which is expected to bring roughly $5 billion in revenues to the province, Slater added.
While 30 per cent of the registered voters in the Boundary-Similkameen riding legitimately signed their names to the anti-HST petition, Slater said the other 70 per cent who didn’t sign the document still need to be represented.
He wants to go to his constituents and ask them, should they wish for the HST to be repealed, what it should be replaced with.
Because, Slater said, without the HST, the province will lose out on revenues needed for education and health care.
He added that if the tax is quashed, the government would have to consider other ways to bring in revenues such as higher income or business taxes.
Slater also said he has heard from many constituents here, including a number of businesses, who are happy with the HST.
Vander Zalm, who was present at the committee meeting on Sept. 13, said his organization was unhappy with the committee’s decision since the initiative vote option is non-binding and essentially will act only as a “public opinion poll.”
He added that the threshold of voters needed to have any vote on the HST matter passed through a referendum is 50 per cent.
According to Elections BC, more than 50 per cent of the registered voters in two-thirds of B.C.’s ridings would have to vote in favour of the initiative for it to be considered successful.
That’s too high a threshold, Vander Zalm said, since less than 50 per cent of B.C.’s population comes out to vote in provincial elections.
However, Premier Gordon Campbell said in a Sept. 13 media release that the government will honour the people’s will based on a simple majority of votes cast.
“If the majority of people who show up at the polls next September are opposed to the HST, I think we have to say we’re going to get rid of the HST and get on with building the future of the province,” Campbell said.
Vander Zalm said if the premier’s sentiment that the initiative vote would be binding is true, then his organization would be satisfied.
But, he added, the announcement that the vote would be binding needs to come from the Legislature.
Fight HST is also concerned with information released at the committee meeting that the provincial cabinet would get to draft the question people would vote on in the initiative vote as well as a possible preamble to the question.
Vander Zalm said since Fight HST is the proponent of the entire anti-HST campaign, it should have a say in drafting the question.
He also said the initiative vote should be held this year.
Otherwise, he said, people will hold off on certain projects such as home renovations until the matter is settled and that could hurt the provincial economy.
If the provincial government does make the initiative vote binding by a simple majority and Fight HST can be involved in the process, Vander Zalm said his organization will likely not proceed with a threatened recall campaign of Liberal MLAs, including Slater.
He said, however, Fight HST is still preparing for such a campaign “just in case.”
Slater said the next step in the process is to get the initiative vote question out as soon as possible.
He wants it to be simple and easy to understand and he also wants the government to give the public information on alternatives to the HST should the tax be extinguished.
Should British Columbians vote that they want the HST scrapped, MLAs would then have to vote on quashing the tax in the Legislature and put an alternative revenue generator in place, Slater said.
[email protected]