HST petition signed by 3,648 in Stikine
http://www.bclocalnews.com/bc_north/interior-news/news/100901894.html
Smithers Interior News
August 18, 2010
by Cameron Orr
The historic anti-HST petition campaign has been ruled successful but Elections BC is blocking further action until a court battle over the validity of the initiative is settled.
Fight HST campaign leader Bill Vander Zalm accused the independent electoral office of stalling by refusing to take the next step of forwarding the petition and his HST-repealing legislation on to a legislative committee.
That committee would then be required to either send the draft law to unravel the HST to a vote of the house or else hold a referendum in September of 2011.
A court challenge by pro-HST business and industry groups aiming to quash the petition will be heard starting Monday, along with a second constitutional challenge of the HST itself launched by Vander Zalm, who contends B.C. failed to correctly implement the Harmonized Sales Tax.
But Vander Zalm said the proceedings and ensuing appeals could take several years.
In the Stikine riding, 3,648 people signed the petition, 29.7 per cent of the eligible voters, said Rod Taylor. (Those number were from the Anti-HST website and were not verified by Elections BC.)
Taylor and Maxine Douglas headed up the petition for this riding as co-captains.
Taylor said the he felt “betrayed” over the fact that Elections BC wouldn’t move the bill to the legislature until the court case gets resolved.
He said if the campaign does shift to recalling certain MLAs, Taylor is confident there will be success.
The provincial NDP are now calling for the Liberals to call the legislature back so the proposed HST initiative bill can be debated.
“To do otherwise is to ignore the will of 750,000 people,” said Doug Donaldson, MLA for Stikine, adding, “We don’t have to wait for Elections BC.”
He called the success of the petition amazing and it showed that people were angry and upset with the decision by the government to implement the HST.
While it will take more than a couple of months with the HST to know how much it has really affected the economy, he said conversations with business owners has shown there are impacts.
As the region tried to pull out of the recession, particularly tourism, this new tax model can be seen as another blow, he said.
Tourists are just one group of people who Klaus Mueller hears complain. Mueller operates Hair Mueller, a barber shop, on Fourth Avenue.
He said volume has dropped in his business and has heard from people on fixed incomes that they will wait longer between getting their hair cut.
“It [the HST] has certainly not been helpful and it has been noticeable,” he said.
That being the case the HST hasn’t been catastrophic on his business.
He said that the petition, which he had available to sign in his business, has shown the government how angry people are but he thinks the real action will come when recalls on Liberal MLAs starts.
He also notes that savings in his operation haven’t appeared either. While he’ll get a higher tax deductible at the end of the year, that rebate won’t cover the loss of business volume.
It’s not all bad. Colin Bateman, the general manager of the Aspen Inn, said business is just as good as always at his restaurant in terms of the number of customers.
He also said that the single tax does make accounting easier but that doesn’t necessarily make it any cheaper – he suggested in the man hours in accounting it might but that’s about it.
Steve Hidber with Oscar’s Source for Sports said that bookkeeping for his business has become slightly easier but the overall impact on the HST won’t be known until after the Back-to-School shopping is completed.
He does note that his business wouldn’t be impacted heavily on the consumer end as most of his products would have been under GST and PST anyways. He did say bookkeeping has been made slighly easier under HST but couldn’t say what the immediate impact of the tax is on the businss as it’s too soon since it was introduced.