Local anti-HST organizer Eddie Petrossian carries a sign as he walks to meet former British Columbia premier Bill Vander Zalm before boarding a ferry in Tsawwassen, B.C., on Wednesday June 30, 2010, to deliver anti-HST petitions which contain more than 700,000 signatures to Elections B.C. in Victoria.Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press
With a court challenge to British Columbia's harmonized sales tax dismissed, supporters and detractors of the tax are now left with only one avenue to win their case - corralling public opinion.
On Friday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Bauman rejected a constitutional challenge to the tax, ruling that the HST is "clearly a federal-provincial matter" and not the imposition of a new tax on B.C. by Ottawa.
Responding to its legal defeat, the Fight HST campaign vowed to focus now on recall and the coming referendum. Chris Delaney, senior organizer of Fight HST, said his group will release next week its plans to use the province's recall law to try to unseat elected government members.
"We're going to give the Premier the option of having us proceed [with recall]or meeting some demands to have this referendum he is calling be truly binding on the government," Mr. Delaney said.
The B.C. government announced on Monday it will conduct a referendum in September, 2011, on the HST, which came into effect on July 1 of this year. Although the results are not legally binding, Premier Gordon Campbell pledged to repeal the tax if a simple majority of voters reject it.
Mr. Delaney said the referendum must be held this year and it must be made legally binding.
Attorney General Mike de Jong, however, rejected the call to change the date of the vote, saying it is dictated by the law.
"The matter will go to referendum and the date for that is set for next year," he said. "And I think there is a valid argument to be made that [the]time could be put to use to have a measured and coherent discussion."
He applauded the ruling and said it is now up to the public to decide if they want to keep the tax. "People can make their own decisions based on the merits, and I hope accurate information and not all of the rhetoric that has characterized this debate thus far."
Former premier Bill Vander Zalm filed the suit on behalf of the Fight HST campaign earlier this summer, after a coalition of B.C. business organizations sought to have Mr. Vander Zalm's petition against the HST declared invalid.
In his written decision, Judge Bauman was careful to avoid judgment on the tax itself.
"While I have characterized the HST scheme as constitutionally sound from the perspective that it represents a tax for national purposes with hopes of a stronger economic foundation and the achievement of administrative efficiencies among its objects," he wrote, "I am in no way passing on the merits of the scheme and whether it will achieve its goals. That burden of proof is for others to bear and the electorate to test."
Business leaders who support the HST are promising to support the government in a public campaign for the tax, but just what that will look like is still uncertain.
Both the business community and the provincial government underestimated the strength of Mr. Vander Zalm's petition drive to repeal the HST earlier this year.
Philip Hochstein, president of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association, said that won't happen again as business prepares for the referendum campaign.
"We now have a definitive clear deadline and I'm sure the business community won't sit back like it did last time," he said. "A year-long battle is a long battle and we have to be very smart about the campaign."