Anti-HST petition gets underway in Penticton

Steve Kidd - Penticton Western News Published: February 14, 2010 3:00 PM

With the Boundary Similkameen riding organized, anti-HST organizer Paul McCavour is looking to get Penticton ready for the Fight the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) petition, which was approved by Elections BC last week. “We’ve had a group up there all along, but the woman who was supposed to get things organized had a job offer and had to leave us suddenly,” said McCavour, who is the lead organizer in Boundary country. “I’ve got all our communities, right from Grand Forks right to Keremeos, all organized and ready to go. Now I’m going to try working in Penticton, see if I can get some volunteers together, get them signed up and go from there.” It’s now a bit of a waiting game, McCavour said. Once the petition was approved, anti-HST organizers started counting the days until they can start collecting signatures. “You have to wait 60 days for the government to refute it, tell you why you need this tax and so on, and then on April 6 we can commence gathering signatures. Then we have 90 days after that,” he said.

McCavour is taking a different approach gathering signatures for the anti-HST petition. He tried to find volunteers to go door-to-door, he explained, but whenever he asked, few people were willing to take on what he agrees can be an exhausting and difficult job. Rather, he’s chosen to find a suitable venue in each community and, just like an election day, advertise the location for the public to sign the petition. That way, McCavour said, he only needs volunteers to stay at the hall and witness the signatures. “Everybody is willing to do that. We’ve had the halls donated to us in four different communities, and even a restaurant,” he said, adding that Lolly’s Restaurant in Okanagan Falls has donated space to the petition drive. In the Boundary Similkameen, McCavour already has locations and volunteers planned for each of the six major communities: Osoyoos, Oliver, Keremeos, OK Falls, Greenwood and Grand Forks. “They’re all set to go, we’re just waiting for when we can legally collect the names and have people sign,” he said. “I have about 90 volunteers right now in all these communities, now I’m going to see if I can work on Penticton. I want to go Summerland, Peachland and Penticton.”

In order to spark a referendum, the petition needs signatures representing 10 per cent of the registered voters in each riding, though McCavour is aiming for a higher number. He wants to both ensure they can cover any disqualified signatures and to send a clear message to the sitting MLAs. “It will be quite an incentive for MLA’s when they see how many people are signing up,” he said, pointing out that with an organization in place, it might be just as easy to get the necessary signatures to recall an MLA. “Now that I’ve got everything organized in this riding, if they put that tax through, how hard do you think it would be to recall someone?” McCavour asked. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they (the provincial liberal MLAs) got together and said this is not worth it, these people are not going to give up.”