It is clear that the anti-HST movement has proven troublesome to the Liberals and their corporate friends.
First the Liberals waited until after the polls closed in the last election to let the voting public know they would be introducing the HST.
The proposal would shift a tax burden of $1.9 billion off the shoulders of large corporations and onto those of working men and women and small businesses, throughout the province.
Liberal spin doctors must have burned the midnight oil conjuring theories and notions to convince the public that this change would be good for them. But the math was and is pretty clear.
Large corporations will pay $1.9 billion less in taxes, the government will need to replace that lost revenue in order to provide services for the province, and the shortfall will become the responsibility of individual taxpayers and small business.
Initially, the Liberals miscalculated in believing the anti-HST petition had no chance of success. When it became apparent that momentum was building to scrap the tax, the Liberals went into damage control and harangued Elections BC for not allowing them to "educate" the public about the virtues of taking on this additional tax load that corporations were happy to shed.
Faced with the signatures of more than 700,000 voters (more than the number supporting the Liberal party in the last election), the marionettes then looked to the puppet masters to enter the fray and enter they did. Corporate B.C. launched legal action to derail the anti-HST movement. With a small fraction of the money saved from that $1.9 billion windfall, corporate B.C. would use the courts to wear down an opponent that would have to depend on donations from the very people making up the shortfall.
In the coming weeks and months (years?) we will have an opportunity to see if we truly have a democracy or simply the illusion of one.
Bob Harris
Prince George
