BC Election 2013

(Edit: February 5, 2010 – Corrected article to reflect that Comox Valley is the largest electoral district in terms of registered voters; Vernon-Monashee is second largest)

Elections BC has announced the receipt of former Premier Bill Vander Zalm‘s initiative proposal to end the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST).

From Elections BC we have the following press release:

VICTORIA – British Columbia’s Chief Electoral Officer, Harry Neufeld, has granted approval in principle on an initiative petition application. The petition will be issued to proponent William Vander Zalm on Tuesday, April 6, 2010. The title of the initiative is: An initiative to end the harmonized sales tax (HST).

“This is the seventh initiative petition application to be approved since the legislation came into force in 1995”, notes Neufeld.

Any registered voter can apply to have a petition issued to gather support for a legislative proposal. After the petition is issued, the proponent will have 90 days to canvass and collect signatures of at least 10% of the registered voters in each of the 85 electoral districts.

Individuals or organizations who intend to oppose the initiative, conduct initiative advertising, or canvass for signatures must be registered with Elections BC. The deadline to apply for registration as an initiative opponent is March 8, 2010.

Registered voters as of April 6, 2010 may sign the petition for the electoral district in which they are registered. Voters may only sign the petition once.

For more information on the initiative petition, visit the Elections BC website (www.elections.bc.ca/index.php/referenda-recall-initiative/initiative/hst/).

The Recall and Initiative Act legislation was passed in 1994 (former Premier Mike Harcourt‘s government) and it was crafted in such a way that made it virtually impossible to obtain any results from it. In a recall, you need 40% of the registered voters in an electoral district to sign a document in 60 days. In an initiative, you need 10% of the registered voters in every electoral district to sign a document in 90 days.

10% of the registered voters per electoral district is not a trivial goal to accomplish. According to the statistics published from Elections BC based on the 2009 BC Election final report, this will amount to approximately an average of 3,468 signatures per electoral district. Some electoral districts are larger than others – Comox Valley is the largest electoral district by registered voters with 47,772 registered voters, while Stikine in the far northwest of the province, has 12,291 registered voters.

In terms of logistics, collecting signatures in large rural electoral districts is a relatively easy goal compared to urban ridings – the population is typically concentrated in town centres. In Stikine electoral district, for example, you could probably have a few canvassers collect the necessary 1,230 signatures by just staying around Smithers, BC (which has a population of over 5,217 according to the BC Census).

It is ironic that the difficulty in collecting signatures will be in the Vancouver area – getting Joe Public off the street to identify their specific provincial electoral district is very difficult (Do I live in Vancouver-Kensington or Vancouver-Fairview? Or was that Vancouver-Fraserview? Oh right! I live in Vancouver East! [a federal electoral district]) and the people collecting signatures have to have them on specified sheets of paper that are specific to an electoral district.

It is for this reason, and the fact that 10% of the signatures in each and every electoral district is a lofty number, that I believe this initiative proposal will fail from both a technical (i.e. failing to get the necessary signatures) and political (i.e. failing to organize enough outrage against the HST) perspective.

The proposed legislation embedded within the initiative proposal (in the event it passes, this will have to be considered by the government), the HST Extingushment Act, is badly written. Despite this, if somebody passes the appropriate document along my way, I will sign it simply because I am curious to see the process if the petition actually succeeds. I do this with due skepticism, mainly because initiative requires a bill to be introduced to the legislature if successful. Ultimately it is up to the government to advance the bill to second reading, which they will not do, just like how they do not advance NDP members’ private bills to second reading. Specifically, the following paragraph applies:

After a Bill is introduced into the legislature, the requirements of the Recall and Initiative Act have been satisfied, and any subsequent reading, amendment, or passage of the Bill will proceed as with any other Bill, with no guarantee of passage.

While the initiative proposal may be successful, it does not oblige the government in any way to take any action. It will, however, put public pressure on the government for ignoring the sentiment of a certain segment of the public, which may spawn some unintended political consequences that would be adverse to the current government.

However, my political radar suggests that this initiative will fail, and that the only political good that can come out of this is showing that the whole Recall and Initiative Act is a legislative joke. I hope the initiative proposal succeeds so the public can see how toothless the legislation truly is.