As the first anti-HST recall effort in British Columbia is all but certain to fail, a former anti-HST campaigner in Northern B.C. said Tuesday the recalls should be abandoned.
The recall efforts are a waste of time and energy since a referendum on the harmonized sales tax is set for September and there is a chance the date could be moved up to June, said Vanderhoof resident Mike Summers.
"Recall is a dead issue. The idea of rolling out campaigns now is dumb," said Summers, a one-time leader of the fringe B.C. Refederation Party who recently joined the NDP.
Summers helped organize a successful initiative petition in north-central B.C. to overturn the harmonized sales tax, which resulted in a B.C. Liberal government decision to hold a vote on whether the new tax should be repealed.
Across the province, more than 700,000 people signed the petition.
Anti-HST organizers hoped to turn the anger over the HST into successful recall campaigns of B.C. Liberal MLAs -- an effort to force the government to take quick action on overturning the HST.
Anti-HST organizer Chris Delaney says, however, the failure in Victoria won't halt planned recall campaigns in B.C.'s Interior.
"This late in the day, it would be a tough battle to succeed," said Delaney of the effort to recall the Oak Bay-Gordon Head MLA Ida Chong, the minister of advanced education.
The deadline to collect signatures is Friday.
At the halfway mark of the 60-day campaign, canvassers had collected 6,000 signatures of the required 16,000, and sign-ups have gone slowly since.
Delaney said the recall hurdle of 40 per cent of the voter list in the last election is difficult to overcome, noting that campaigners have also run into challenges in Oak Bay, including 4,000 to 5,000 civil servants who didn't want to sign a petition that would leave their names open to public scrutiny. Another 7,000 voters who were registered in the last election don't live there anymore, and another 9,000 live in apartments. It's difficult for canvassers to get into apartments because they need the permission of the owner, noted Delaney.
While anger over the HST has diminished -- with the announced resignation of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell -- Delaney said he doesn't believe it has decreased the resolve to do away with the tax.
He said canvassers were collecting signatures from six out of 10 people in Oak Bay. "I don't think it's a lack of interest. It's there if you can get to the people," said Delaney.
A recall campaign has already been launched in Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, and organizers are readying a campaign in Kamloops North. Next on the list is the Cariboo Chilcotin, which includes the community of Williams Lake, south of Prince George.
These ridings don't face the same issues as Oak Bay in terms of civil servants and apartment dwellers, but Delaney acknowledge there will be other challenges including the larger rural areas that will need to be canvassed.
Norman Ruff, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Victoria, said while the anti-HST movement has been successful, if they continue to roll out unsuccessful recall campaigns their credibility could be undermined.
There's also a message for the Liberals, however, who have argued the recall campaigns are an abuse of the legislation, said Ruff. If that's true, then clearly, the failure in Oak Bay shows you can count on the good sense of the electorate to decide when an MLA should be legitimately recalled, he said.
