Unpopular, But Intelligent

No, we're not talking about Michael Ignatieff for once. This time it's B.C.'s Harmonized Sales Tax, which taxpayers hate but is probably smart in the long run.

British Columbians will have the chance to vote down the hated HST in a referendum scheduled for next fall, but why wait, asks the National Post’s Jeff Jedras. Liberal leadership candidate Christy Clark, who’s vying for outgoing Premier Gordon Campbell’s job, has proposed preempting the referendum by holding a quick vote in the legislature to kill the HST a.s.a.p. Good idea, says Jedras. “In any democracy, you must listen to the will of the citizens, and the people of B.C. seem clear that the HST has got to go,” he writes. “Prolonging this process through the referendum next fall would be pointless, and would only prolong … economic uncertainty.”

Citizens’ outrage over the HST in B.C. is certainly widespread (it forced Campbell’s resignation), but according to the Globe and Mail’s Gary Mason, Jedras is ignoring a key statistic. A recent poll found 57 per cent of voters say they want more information on the HST before they vote on it. So far dialogue on the issue has been monopolized by anti-HST campaign leader and former premier Bill Vander Zalm, but he’s hardly an economic expert. Most economists say the HST will actually be good for the economy, yet because it’s been so unpopular Liberal leadership candidates are each scrambling to prove they’re the one best able to kill it. “Instead of raising the white flag in surrender,” argues Mason, “Liberal leadership candidates should be talking about why the HST is in the long-term interests of the province.” Waiting for a fall referendum might give the Grits just enough time to sell voters on a policy that is controversial but sound, especially in light of the fact that if the HST is cancelled taxpayers will have to pay back the $1.6 billion Ottawa gave the province to implement it.

The Province’s editorial board isn’t too impressed with Clark’s referendum suggestion, and has this tidy piece of advice for the leadership candidate: “[A]lways remember that, while B.C. politics needs new ideas, they also have to make sense.” Fair point.