Canada Day will not be as happy a celebration in British Columbia this year.
It's not because we lack for patriotism or events to show it - July 1 will be a day full of festivities, especially in Squamish.
But it'll also be the day a whole host of items suddenly become seven per cent more expensive, as the 12 per cent Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) comes in, combining the five per cent federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) with the seven per cent Provincial Sales Tax (PST), tacked onto many previously-PST-exempt goods.
The vast majority of British Columbians are unhappy about the tax according to surveys - and enough of them are upset enough to have signed the province-wide anti-HST petition, which appears set to become the first petition to meet the stringent standards of the B.C. Initiative and Recall Act, requiring at least 10 per cent of all eligible voters in each of B.C.'s 85 ridings to sign within 90 days.
However, as we have previously noted here, the petition doesn't force the government to scrap the tax, merely to either introduce a bill in the legislature to rescind the HST-enabling legislation or to hold a province-wide referendum on it. The referendum would again only force the government to introduce legislation, not to pass it.
The provincial government's intransigence in the face of the successful petition campaign makes it clear that there will be no backing down at this level.
The next step, then, is the other part of the Initiative and Recall Act - recalling enough government MLAs to cause it to lose its majority in the legislature and bring down the Campbell administration.
The defection of at least one high-profile member of the BC Liberal caucus, former Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom, gives the anti-HST hope that they can bring down at least another six Liberals, which would be enough to put Campbell's government in a minority.
But the hill to climb for a recall campaign is very steep - much moreso than the petition campaign. To recall a sitting MLA requires a petition signed by 40 per cent of all eligible voters in the riding - that's not 40 per cent of all who voted; it's 40 per cent of those who could have voted - within 45 days. That's four times the number of signatures in half the time compared to the petition campaign. No MLA has ever been successfully recalled under the legislation - one, Paul Reitsma, was on his way to being recalled when he read the writing on the wall and resigned.
The main hope for HST-haters is the Lekstrom effect - that six to eight well-planned and potentially-successful recall campaigns scare enough MLAs to create a caucus revolt and force the government's hand to scrap the HST.
Clearly shame isn't going to do it - maybe recall will?
-Tim Shoults
