HST drama - what's up with that?

The HST drama is playing out in court, starting today, Monday August 16, 2010.

A group of business organizations are challenging the bill proposed by the No-HST group. Recall that the No-HST group's scrap-the-tax bill calls for the HST to be 'extinguished' in the provincial legislature. The business organizations say the government's HST legislation is federal legislation so the provincial government doesn't have the authority to scrap-the-tax. Hence, the court challenge.

To complicate matters, there is another court case. The No-HST group, headed up by Mr. Vander Zalm,  got a lawyer and is challenging the constitutionality of the HST itself.  According to Mr. Vander Zalm's lawyer - the tax is "nullity" because it wasn't explicitly authorized by the provincial legislature. Remember - the only vote in the provincial legislature that had anything to do with the HST was the one to get rid of the PST. What the provincial government signed with the federal government was an implementation agreement  - there was no vote in the provincial legislature on the HST itself. The HST is a federal tax, not a provincial tax.

To try to understand what's going on, let's take a step back.

A provincial law called the Recall and Initiative Act, allows any registered voter to start, or initiate, a bill, or piece of legislation. That's what the No-HST group did. They drafted the scrap-the-tax bill and got it approved by Elections BC. The next step in the initiative process was to sign up 10 per cent of all registered voters in every electoral district in 90 days. The No-HST group did that too.

Next, the signed petitions were delivered to Elections BC and it was Elections BC's job to makes sure there were enough valid petition signatures. Elections BC checked and there were enough valid signatures.

The next step was for Elections BC to send the scrap-the-tax bill to a committee of the provincial legislature. Elections BC didn't.

Craig James, the acting Chief Electoral Officer, decided to hold off on this step until the court cases, which starts today, are decided.

So democracy has to wait for the outcome of the court cases. However, what this process has taught us is we need workable tools to make our democratic system accountable to the people it is supposed to serve. The next step is 'workable' recall and initiative.