OSOYOOS TIMES-June 30, 2010

By Paul Everest - Osoyoos Times

Being at the top of a hit list “is a little distracting” for Boundary-Similkameen MLA John Slater.
On June 29, Fight HST, the organization working to have the pending harmonized sales tax repealed, issued a media release stating it had collected 700,000 signatures for the Initiative Petition which began three months ago.
As of June 29, 12,005 signatures have been added to the petition in this riding.
The organization stated in a June 23 media release that it is drafting plans to kick off a recall process in November and included a list of 24 Liberal MLAs it intends to target due to the large number of signatures reported collected in ridings those MLAs represent.
Slater is No. 1 on that list.
Former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm, the leader of the Fight HST organization, said in the release that the group hopes the MLAs on the list will pressure the government to do something about the HST or risk losing their seats.
On the eve of the HST coming into effect, Slater said he is worried about a possible recall campaign, especially since he only captured a little more than 37 per cent of the votes in this electoral district in the May, 2009, provincial election.
“The HST is obviously the main thrust behind this,” Slater said, adding that the government to which he belongs hasn’t handled the public relations campaign for the tax very well.
“I think we’ve done a very poor job of describing how it’s going to impact people and certainly the anti-HST people are doing a very good job of getting it out there.”
But, he said, once the tax comes into effect on July 1, people will start to see the good side of the HST.
“People will see the actual information come July and August and a lot of the fears that are out there from the anti-HST group will be alleviated and people will realize it’s not as bad as its being made out to be,” Slater said. “I’ll use painters as an example. They currently pay seven per cent on their paint, seven per cent on their truck or their ladders or their tape or their brushes.
“This way, if they’re doing a thousand-dollar paint job and $300 of it is labour and the rest is materials, they have to collect seven per cent on the labour and the materials, but they’ll get a rebate on the materials. Although the job may go up one or two per cent.”
Slater blames the anti-HST movement for creating a fear of the tax among British Columbians.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there as well. If you talk to somebody on the corner that’s got these petitions, they’ll tell you whatever you want to hear to sign the petition and that’s not fair,” he said.
“They’re telling people that home heating is going up seven per cent, gasoline is going up seven per cent.
“I think once July 1 comes in and people realize the ramifications of the tax, they may have second thoughts about it.”
Although, Slater added, there are some sectors of the economy that will be hit hard by the HST.
Earlier this month, Slater and provincial Finance Minister Colin Hansen met with a number of local developers in Osoyoos.
He said a major concern that came out of that meeting are the 3,000 residential units in the Okanagan Valley that are currently ready for occupation but aren’t sold.
“As of July 1, if they’re not sold, anything over $525,000 will be subject to HST. That’s significant to the development community,” he said.
Slater has been appointed to a committee made up of six Liberal and four NDP MLAs that is tasked with dealing with the Initiative Petition once it is turned in to Elections BC.
Vander Zalm has indicated he will hand the petition to Elections BC on June 30, five days ahead of a July 5 deadline.
Once the petition is submitted, Elections BC will begin verifying the signatures through manual and computer-assisted processes.
If the petition is found to meet all of Election BC’s validation requirements, the province’s chief electoral officer (CEO) will announce the results within 42 days of its submission.
That will be Aug. 11 if Vander Zalm makes good on his promise.
If the petition is successful, it will be referred to the “government standing committee on legislative initiatives” to which Slater belongs, along with a draft “HST Extinguishment Act,” said Anton Boegman, Elections BC’s executive director of corporate planning and event management.
Within 90 days, Boegman said, the committee would have to either recommend tabling the draft bill in the provincial Legislature or refer the matter back to the CEO for an “initiative vote.”
Should the bill go the Legislature, MLAs don’t have to vote on it, he said.
If the matter goes to an initiative vote on whether the HST should be repealed, which would be similar to a province-wide referendum, the next time such a vote could happen is Sept. 24, 2011.
As for the recall, the first day anyone could apply to Elections BC for the opportunity to have an MLA recalled is Nov. 15, 2010, 18 months after last year’s election.
A new recall petition would have to begin and, according to the Recall and Initiative Act, be signed by “more than 40 per cent of the voters who were, on the date of the last election of the Member, registered voters for the Member’s electoral district.”
Since recall legislation was introduced in B.C. in 1996, there have been 20 recall campaigns.
All of them failed, although one failed as a result of the resignation of the MLA in question during the verification of the recall petition.
Yes, Slater said he is concerned about the possibility he could lose his seat.
But until then, it’s business as usual for him.
“I was elected to represent the people in this riding and it’s my job to do that as well as I can.”
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