The Citizen headline read, "Tax backers face rough ride." The rest of the story gave a blow-by-blow account of the HST public forum held last week at UNBC.
Intended as an information session on HST, the event was held to provide informed opinion on the tax, its strengths, weaknesses and economic implications. Speaking for the provincial HST were tax lawyer David Robertson and Dan McLaren a local businessman and head of the downtown Commonwealth Development project.
Speaking against the HST, and in support of a return to the old PST/GST tax system, were former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm and B.C. First Party spokesman Chris Delaney.
As it turned out, and as you read in The Citizen, there was a handful of hecklers bound and determined to get in the way of any explanatory comments about the HST. David Robertson, who has 15 years experience in the tax business, couldn't get a word in edgeways when he tried to explain the economic advantages of the investment-friendly one-tax HST as opposed to the two-tax PST/GST, which taxes capital projects.
Robertson could have said the sun will rise in the east tomorrow and the heckling wouldn't have stopped. It soon became clear that many in the audience had not come to listen.
In the end, and as an informative policy presentation event, the evening just kind of died.
But, from a political perspective, the HST forum was enormously revealing and I was struck with two issues that are more accurately defining the HST debate in B.C.
First, opposition to the HST has nothing to do with tax policies or the economic impact of one tax over the other. Rather, the opposition is political.
It is anti-Liberal, pro-NDP and pro-organized labor.
One sensed the hecklers were grasping at political issues when they shouted about the BCR disposition and whether or not union jobs would be created from any economic benefit of the HST.
Given the HST opposition stance of NDP leader Adrian Dix to HST, this was to be expected. It's just unfortunate partisan politics and bad manners had to highjack what should have been an informative policy discussion.
Second, it didn't take too long to see that Bill Vander Zalm and Chris Delaney hadn't the foggiest idea about the impact of the HST on British Columbia.
Chris Delaney stepped in the glue when he said that in the last year HST had caused increased unemployment.
Whoops.
Before Delaney starts winging employment stats he should take the time to get up to speed, particularly in Prince George.
For the record, since April 6, The Citizen has carried four articles about our rapidly declining unemployment rates.
The latest, dated May 24, reads, "Unemployment Insurance claims plummet in Prince George." The story went to say we're at an unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent compared to 9.6 per cent a year earlier.
From this, let me observe we've also had the benefit of the investment-friendly HST in the past 10 months. Is there a correlation between the introduction of the HST and more jobs? You bet there is especially in Prince George.
Even more baffling was Bill Vander Zalm's answer to the question, "Have you discussed your opposition to the HST with the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce?" Poor old Bill had to ponder this one for minute. For the last year and a half he's tried to make the claim that the HST is bad for business, but on whose evidence?
He couldn't say he hadn't talked to the B.C. Chamber, which represents small and large businesses, plus Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade all over the province, without admitting he had no basis for his argument.
So in true Bill Vander Zalm fashion he summarily dismissed the B.C. Chamber of Commerce inferring it only represented big business or, "Howe Street" as he called it.
Wrong answer, particularly coming from Bill Vander Zalm, who is a past-president of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce and should've know better than to put that response on the record.
What was even more puzzling about Vander Zalm's comment is that the only significant business organization that doesn't belong to the B.C. Chamber of Commerce is the Vancouver Board of Trade, which really does represent Howe Street.
As the evening wound down it was clear the information session as an open two-way policy discussion was a bust.
HST proponent Dan McLaren accurately summed up the night saying "Sadly, it was more of a political rally than an earnest academic debate. If it's all about hating, hating the politicians, hating Gordon Campbell, hating the HST, hating the Liberals, then stand with Bill Vander Zalm and Chris Delaney, you will be more comfortable there.
"But if it's about creating an environment for economic growth - jobs for our children and saying yes to the opportunity of tomorrow, then stand with us."
On June 13 HST ballots will be mailed to British Columbians.
Will B.C. voters make their decision on the basis of good tax policy or uninformed emotion? I trust it's the former.
And at the end of the day, I still revert to a question I posed a couple of years ago, which is: what would you rather have - a slightly cheaper cup of coffee or a job?
