That’s what I said. The Liberals out manoeuvred the NDP by tricking the NDP MLA’s to support the notion of the province-wide referendum in 2011. In one fell swoop, the Liberals moved the HST off the front burner and upstaged the NDP.
By moving to a referendum instead of legislative vote in Victoria, the BC Liberals get to avoid showcasing which MLA’s actually support the HST, the Premier avoids the (remote) possibility of a non-confidence vote and early election (of which he would most certainly lose), the government gets to gather its resources and start to legally promote this tax and collect its revenue for a year, and most importantly – NDP, BC Conservatives and anti-HST critics of their biggest issue.
The BC Liberals now have repositioned themselves as the champion of respecting the will of the voter if the HST is rejected (its too bad they didn’t understand this when unveiling their hated tax despite electoral promises not to do so).
BC voters can’t wait. I sincerely hope that BC Liberal targeted recall efforts go fully ahead in November. The BC Liberals lied their way to power. To pull this referendum trick now is no different than reverse billing tricks that the cable companies got fined for about 10 years ago – where they gave you a service for free, then started billing you for it after 30 days (despite never asking for it).
The best weapon against this latest BC Liberal stunt is knowledge. Understand what they’re trying to do, ignore it, vote them out of power anyways.
But my fire is also aimed at the NDP too. How dare they fall for this? They got snookered by a group of rookie Liberal MLA’s on an issue that the NDP could have won the next election on. The NDP stood close to gaining up to 50% of the popular vote had this thing gone the other way; the Liberals appeared to be digging in their heels and it looked all but hopeless for Campbell.
The BC NDP has fallen on their swords so many times in opposition, I wonder how effective they’d be in government. They got snookered again in allowing MLA’s to resurrect the gold plated MLA pension plans that former Premier Glen Clark helped to wipe out. The NDP took the pension plan, took the substantial MLA pay raises, and even defended them.
The NDP would have won the next election by a mile, but with their misstep on the HST, I’m almost ready to wager a small sum on the BC Liberals getting another term.
