Wednesday, August 18, 2010 Bill Tieleman Blog
BC Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman said this afternoon that he plans to issue his decision at 10 a.m. Friday if at all possible,after hearing arguments from a big business coalition that wants to invalidate the Initiative petition signed by 705,643 voters. That follows a day of arguments from the business organization's legal team - which strangely included comparing the campaign against the HST to a possible citizens Initiative effort to legalize marijuana in BC and saying voters had been "fooled" into signing the Fight HST petition. Lead business lawyer Peter Gall said the proposed Fight HST draft legislation to kill the HST that was attached to the petition was no more possible for the BC Legislature to implement than it would be able to make marijuana legal in the province. Bauman also heard counter arguments from lawyers for Fight HST leader and former BC Premier Bill Vander Zalm, the petition proponent, as well as a lawyer for Elections BC, which approved the wording before it was launched. And NDP MLA Mike Farnworth strongly disagreed with Gall's position, saying that the entire Initiative question should be dealt with by the BC Legislature, not the court. (more)
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