Bruce Strachan
Right Side Up
It's time Gordon Campbell bit the harmonized sales tax bullet, showed some political courage and let the HST debate proceed to the B.C. legislature for a full-blown debate. This is by far the best remedy for the beleaguered Liberals and the best way for the party to drag itself out of its self-inflicted HST mess.
With the anti-HST petition approved by Elections BC and Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman, the anti-HST process - in the form of The HST Extinguishment Act - moves on to the Select Standing Committee on Legislative Initiatives. The committee, composed of six Liberals and four New Democrats can recommend one of two options.
Send the proposed act to the Legislature for debate; or two, send it back to the chief electoral officer for a province-wide vote.
The province-wide vote process has more tricks than a Swiss Army knife has blades. By legislation, these votes are held once every three years - beginning Sept. 28, 1996 - and on the last Saturday of September after that date. If we held an HST referendum it would be on Sept. 24, 2011. Are you still with me? There's more: the three-year voting sequence parallels municipal elections, except municipal elections are held on the third Saturday in November. An anti-HST vote would make for a politically complicated and somewhat messy 2011.
Plus, elections are expensive and the last thing Gordon Campbell would want to impose on the already-disgruntled B.C. taxpayer is an added - and in my view - unnecessary expense.
No, Campbell should ask his committee majority to act decisively, and send the HST petition and debate to the legislative assembly where it belongs.
There are pros and cons to this strategy. First, a look at the downside for the government.
Debate in the legislature is focused and there's no doubt the government in general and Gordon Campbell in particular will take a beating.
As an example, expect this question and many like it from the NDP: "Mr. Premier, when did you first know you were going to unleash this unfair tax and un-democratic double cross on the unsuspecting B.C. taxpayer? (Nothing prescient here, I picked most of it up on the NDP website.)"
It will go on like that for days. Campbell and Finance Minister Colin Hansen will take a lot of heat, all of which will be duly reported on a daily basis.
And they will have to take it. Attempting to force closure, or in anyway stifle debate, will see great gobs of discontent dropped on the government benches from stratospheric heights.
If the government is smart, they will match speaker for speaker on the debate. There is no place for shrinking violets in the supercharged atmosphere of the legislative assembly. Even dissenting ex-cabinet minister Blair Lekstrom admits he supported the HST when it first came to cabinet.
If the Campbell cabinet can't convince the Liberal caucus the HST is a better tax, then the argument is lost.
On the pro side for the government, the case for HST is solid, when explained, which to date hasn't happened. As an example, during the petition campaign, many people - including Bill Vander Zalm - believed prices on big-ticket items, like cars, would increase. That was not the case.
Do Carol James and the NDP know the former provincial sales tax put a heavier burden on the poor and near-poor? According to Simon Fraser researcher Jon Kesselman a childless family of two earning $30,000 a year will gain a $100 a year with HST tax credits.
A free-flowing no-holds-barred legislative debate also gives the Liberals the opportunity to pin down the NDP on their plans for the HST. To wit, are New Democrats really opposed to the tax, or not?
Carol James is on the record as saying if elected her party would not rescind the HST, but instead renegotiate the terms of the federal/provincial agreement in 2015.
An easy out, but what would be on the NDP table if Carole James were renegotiating the HST agreement?
Would the Lower Mainland-dominated NDP rescind the residential energy rebate to the detriment of those of us who live in colder climates? How about the exemption on books? All good questions for Ms. James and deserving of an answer.
In the final analysis, the problems facing the Liberals since the first whisper of a harmonized sale tax are accusations of secrecy and deliberately misleading campaign promises. Right or wrong, the success of the anti-HST petition shows that at least 700,000 British Columbians believed those accusations to be correct.
There was little reaction to those charges. The Campbell government stumbled badly in its response and let its dissenters provide the answers; a fatal flaw in politics.
A full HST debate in the legislature would give the government and the NDP the opportunity to put their respective policies on the record and fill in those blanks.
And believe me, when it comes to both sides of the HST debate, there's no shortage of blanks.
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