BC chooses to scrap the HST

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The HST in BC is dead. Just under 55 per cent of people who voted in the referendum chose to kill the tax.

A total of 1.6 million people cast a ballot, which is just over half of eligible voters. The government argued the 12 per cent HST streamlines our tax system and is more inviting to business. But opponents argued it’s a $2 billion shift from business to consumers; they managed to gather enough signatures on a province-wide petition to force a referendum.

Premier Christy Clark vows the PST/GST system will be back no later than March 31, 2013.

“Let me be clear… We will return to the PST with the exemptions that existed prior to the HST,” she says. “That’s what people voted for, and that’s what’s going to happen. I’ve directed the minister of finance to act without delay to move back to the PST and begin negotiations with the federal government to wind down the HST.”

Finance Minister Kevin Falcon plans to meet with federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in September to discuss paying back Ottawa $1.6 billion in HST transition money.

Falcon says he is disappointed but not surprised voters decided to scrap the HST. He admits his government is to blame for the bungled roll-out of the tax in 2009, which, to many, appeared like a backdoor deal.

“That is going to be subject to negotiations and discussions. I’m not going to be having a public negotiation, but we will honour the commitment we made to keep up our end of the bargain. I intend to be meeting with [Federal Finance] Minister Flaherty in September to begin those discussions on how we are going to do that.”

Falcon says it will be a challenge to manage what he pegs as a $3 billion budget hole, but he’s confident they can do it.

NDP Leader Adrian Dix says the victory for the ‘yes’ side is very significant. “You know, it’s a 150,000 vote win. That’s how many more votes the ‘yes’ side got than the ‘no’ side go.”

He says it’s time for BC to put the HST behind it and move forward on other business. “It’s been two years since this government came to office. They’ve done nothing but the HST. That has now utterly failed. I think it’s time they got down to work facing the serious issues that face the province.”

Sean Holman with Public Eye Online says the result isn’t surprising. “The government pulled out all the stops to win the referendum, to ensure the HST was kept. They promised a reduction in the HST. They did not impose a cap on what business lobby groups spent during the referendum. Yet all despite all of that, at the end of the day, British Columbians said we don’t want it.”

A look at the breakdown by riding

Elections BC has broken down the vote results by riding and it is startling: only 25 of 85 ridings voted to keep the tax.

In the ridings of North Surrey and Vancouver Kingsway,  70 per cent voted to get rid of the tax. On the other side of the coin, people in West Vancouver, North Vancouver-Seymour, and Vancouver Quilchena were least likely to want to it gone.

The Interior and northern parts of the province were fairly split on the issue.

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