Almost comical, watching Libs try to turn tide
Gov't could fall if it lost seven seats to recall
By Michael Smyth, The Province June 8, 2010 9:17 AM Comments (31)
•Columbia is witnessing a display of people power like nothing before — and it has the government thoroughly baffled, befuddled and bamboozled.
With Bill Vander Zalm's anti-HST petition soaring over the legal signature threshold (with a month still to go in the sign-up period), it's almost comical watching the Liberals try to turn back the tide of public anger.
Plan A was to simply ignore Vander Zalm. The government didn't even bother registering with Elections B.C. as an official opponent of his citizen-initiative petition, legally handcuffing themselves and severely restricting their ability to fight back.
Plan B was to accuse Vander Zalm of spreading misinformation about the harmonized sales tax — pretty rich for a government that refused for 10 months even to release a list of goods and services that will rise in price (before finally posting a woefully incomplete list late last month).
Last week, the Liberal chair of the legislature's citizen-initiative committee threatened to declare the petition "invalid" on constitutional grounds.
Just one little problem there: that would be illegal. I'm not sure you can dignify that smooth move by calling it a "plan," but let's go ahead and call it Plan C. For Cockamamie.
And now comes Plan D. For Duh. Geoff Plant, the former Liberal attorney-general, has gone public with his opinion that a provincial petition can't overturn a federally administered tax, so the 620,000 signatures (and counting) should be turned over to the courts to deal with.
Never mind that the HST was B.C.'s idea, brought in at the request of the Gordon Campbell government and with its full legal backing and co-operation.
But for Plant to argue now that Vander Zalm's petition is "illegal" totally misses the point.
The grassroots fight against the HST is not a legal battle, it's a political one. It's not whether Campbell is going to follow the letter of the law, but whether he's going to follow the will of the people, and what will happen to him and his government if he doesn't.
Let's talk a little political reality for a minute. Can you imagine if Campbell was to ask Prime Minister Stephen Harper to cancel the HST, and Harper went ahead with it anyway? Unlike the provincial Liberals, I don't think Harper's Conservatives are all that anxious to slice their own throats, especially when a federal election could be triggered at any time.
Few people are going to buy the Campbell government's argument that the HST can't be undone by B.C. And to declare the petition illegal, or to challenge it in court, or to pull some other technical stunt, might make people even angrier.
Don't forget Vander Zalm's 6,000-strong army of canvassers could start circulating new petitions in November: recall petitions. Don't forget that, if the Liberals lost seven seats in resulting byelections, the entire government could fall.
So perhaps the government will use its other legal option in the face of a successful petition: Agree to a non-binding referendum on the HST in September 2011, and pray that the anger — and the threat of recall — wanes in the meantime.
To the delight of their enemies, the Liberals seem uninterested in Plan E: Extinguish the HST.
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http://www.theprovince.com/opinion/Almost+comical+watching+Libs+turn+tide/3125317/story.html#ixzz0qI9kukov
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Topic: Fight The HST! (Read 148477 times)