Don't underestimate the magnitude of the concession that Gordon Campbell has coughed up on the HST. To save his own neck, Campbell had to stick his own neck out. He's doing that big time. By agreeing to a referendum binding on his government through a simple majority vote, Campbell is inviting furious British Columbians to slake their anger, and drive a stake through the HST once and for all. Consider what Campbell is surrendering with this major climbdown on the hated sales tax: Provincial law says the referendum must get support of 50 per cent of all registered voters to succeed and, even then, the result wo
uld be nonbinding. Those rules are extremely favourable to the government and it's why Bill Vander Zalm initially blew his stack when he heard the Liberals were opting for a referendum on his anti-HST petition.
But Campbell turned the tables on The Zalm and everyone else when he changed the rules, and said he'll be bound by a simple majority of the people who cast ballots on Sept. 24, 2011 -- no matter how many actually show up to vote. Don't forget this is the same premier who said the HST was "the single biggest thing we could do to improve the economy." The same man who refused to budge when 700,000 people signed a petition against it. The same guy who spent over $780,000 on pro-HST brochures. After sticking to his guns for over a year, he's now handing those guns to voters and inviting them to shoot down his precious HST.
Why is he doing it? In a word: survival. Agreeing to a fair and binding referendum may keep the wolves from Campbell's door. If Campbell had opted for the stacked-deck referendum prescribed by law, several of his most vulnerable MLAs would have been at the mercy of Vander Zalm's "army" in threatened recall campaigns. Now recall is less likely.(more)
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