Filibuster CartoonsTitle: The least popular men in Canada (click to view)
Date: September 13, 2010
Up until his 1993 resignation, Brian Mulroney was infamous for having earned the dubious honor of being the single most unpopular prime minister in all of Canadian history. With an approval rating perennially languishing in the mid-teens, it's hardly surprising he elected to ditch out early, rather than face near-certain destruction at the ballot box. The reasons Mulroney was so uniquely despised were obviously multitudinous, but at the same time, most history books are quick to acknowledge that his 1991 introduction of the "Goods and Services Tax" (GST) clearly played an enormous role. In theory, the GST was an attempt to consolidate and streamline the Canadian tax regime to facilitate economic growth in the sectors that needed it most. In practice, it effectively shifted much of the Canada's tax burden from industry to individual consumers, who now had to give the federal government a 7% cut of everything they bought or sold. This went over much as you might expect.
And now, in my province of British Columbia, history is repeating itself through the persona of Premier Gordon Campbell. On July 1st, Campbell's government also introduced a new tax, the similarly-titled HST, or "Harmonized Sales Tax." As the name suggests, the tax was an attempt to merge BC's existing provincial sales tax with Mulroney's GST, the collection of which would then be outsourced to the federal government. Again, in theory, consolidation is lovely and uncontroversial, and streamlining tax collection can be a good way to cut the provincial government's overhead. In practice, however, Campbell's HST actually
raised the overall provincial sales tax rate higher than a simple addition of the two taxes should have generated, in part because the old provincial sales tax was not applied to
everything — unlike the HST. British Columbians are now paying new taxes on their meals and clothes and haircuts and dozens of other things that the province never used to take a cut of.
And again, the larger optics of the HST are also terrible in a very GSTy sort of way, since a large motivation of Campbell's tax was to shift the province's tax burden from business to consumers, the former of which are strong supporters of his, and the BC Liberal Party in general. And again, the consumers themselves don't seem too pleased with bearing the burden of this arrangement.
Unlike Mulroney, however, Premier Campbell says he has no plans to resign anytime soon, despite the fact that a
recent poll pegged his approval rating at just 12% — the lowest of any premier of any Canadian province. But British Columbians are a plucky sort, and are willing to take matters into their own hands. In a rare move almost without precedent in Canadian democracy, over half a million BCers signed a petition calling for a repeal of the HST, a gesture which, under provincial law, forces the government to act.
It was somewhat unclear for a while how Premier Campbell planned to respond, but as I write this, the breaking news tells me that his government is now saying that they will hold a "HST, yes or no" referendum next fall. Not good enough, says former premier Bill Vander Zalm, who was one of the lead organizers of the petition drive (and probably wants to become premier again himself someday). Vander Zalm's people are now declaring that they will launch a formal recall campaign against Campbell — again, in a move practically without Canadian precedent.
I don't often report on the affairs of my own province, because obviously the politics of British Columbia are, well, rather provincial in appeal. But what is happening now in BC is a strong, and I think fairly inspirational, sign of the uniquely democratic, populist sensibilities of my part of Canada. If we can manage to hold this government to account, and overturn a tax that no one wanted or voted for... well, that would be a fairly historic moment in the political development of a famously passive (and over-taxed) people.
CKA Uber 
CKA Uber 
