Fight HST denounces Elections BC over rule change

Friday's Globe and Mail  Published Friday, Nov. 26, 2010 3:00AM EST

Elections BC rejected a Fight HST recall application as too lengthy – but did so using rules that were drafted after it received the application.  The rejection has led recall organizers to suggest the province’s chief electoral officer deliberately thwarted their attempt to get approval to launch a petition to oust a Liberal MLA who supported the harmonized sales tax, and should step down.

While Elections BC has defended its new rules – which pushed the Fight HST application over a 200-word limit by counting the acronyms MLA and HST as eight words instead of two – recall organizers expressed concern that they were not included in the application form when they downloaded it from Elections BC’s website.  “It’s a total joke. This is the kind of thing they do in banana republics ... when they don’t want to have elections or they don’t want people to win. And we’re doing it right here in Canada,” said Chris Delaney, an organizer of the Fight HST campaign. Mr. Delaney made the comments on Thursday after learning Elections BC had rejected Fight HST’s application for a recall in the suburban Victoria riding of Oak Bay-Gordon Head. Universities Minister Ida Chong is the first target of anti-HST activists’ campaign of recalls against Liberal members of the legislature.

Mr. Delaney said organizers were never told MLA and HST (harmonized sales tax) each counted as more than one word.  Fight HST submitted its application on Monday. The document outlining the changes was uploaded to the Elections BC website on Wednesday afternoon. A cached view of the site shows it wasn’t part of the recall petition application package as recently as Tuesday.  Elections BC said Craig James, the province’s chief electoral officer, was unavailable for comment on Thursday. But a spokeswoman said Fight HST organizers were told after the application was rejected that the new rules would be put on the website this week. When asked why organizers wouldn’t be made aware of the new rules until after their application was submitted, she said: “Before the application had been submitted, there had been no need for a policy. No recall application in the past had ever come close to the 200-word limit. It hadn't been an issue.”

When asked if an unforeseen problem could arise when Fight HST resubmits its application, the spokeswoman said Elections BC follows provincial legislation in all its decisions. She declined to comment on whether instituting such rules after the fact reflects negatively on the non-partisan, independent office.  Bill Vander Zalm, a former B.C. premier and leader of the Fight HST movement, called on Mr. James to step down as a result of the decision.  “If there were restrictions on acronyms, that information should have been given to the applicants at the time they were handed their application,” Mr. Vander Zalm said in a written statement.  “But it wasn’t, because Craig James obviously made it up [on Wednesday] when he decided this would be another way ... to sabotage the recall petition.”  Mr. Delaney said the application was resubmitted on Thursday, but more than 150 canvasser applications also likely will have be redone because they have the same wording as the original application.