Why I’m not jumping on the anti-HST bandwagon

Armchair Mayor column, The Kamloops Daily News, Saturday, May 1, 2010

I appreciate the anti-HST bandwagon rolling past my corner of the world, but I’m going to resist hopping on, at least for now.

I fully appreciate the fact that HST is the most unpopular move the Liberals have pulled since they tried to privatize the Coquihalla. Yes, I know Terry Lake couldn’t get elected dogcatcher right now (no offence to our friends at animal control), and Kevin Krueger would likely be consigned to cleaning out kennels.

Lake will have to build a public plaza outside his constituency office if many more protests are staged in front of it.

And I definitely understand that the only language Premier Gordon Campbell seems to understand is the language of political survival, and that he sometimes has to be on the brink of extinction before he pulls out the surrender flag.

The government pulled a fast one on the public and has done a lousy job of convincing us they’re doing the right thing.

Despite all that, I am hindered by a tendency — I know, it’s a fatal affliction of mine — to put a lot of stock in people who actually know what they’re talking about.

I’m not referring to Finance Minister Colin Hansen, who was in town yesterday on his Damage Control Tour. I mean the guys who live, breathe and work this economic stuff.

Guys like economist Jon Kesselman, who provided the Business Council of B.C. with an eight-page report. Kesselman holds the Canada research chair in public finance with the graduate public policy program at Simon Fraser University.

He argues the HST is way better than the alternative — retaining the PST, which he calls antiquated. Keeping it would be a drag on the B.C. economy, he says.

“Sales tax harmonization fulfils all the standard economic criteria for good tax policy with flying colours,” he wrote. “However, harmonization has been woefully deficient in B.C. with respect to another, non-economic, criterion: public acceptability.”

Some two dozen business groups — including the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, B.C. Trucking Association, B.C. Construction Association and others — have signaled their support for the HST.

It may be good for business, but what about consumers?

Elsewhere, Kesselman wrote, “. . . Retaining the PST will continue to impose large but hidden tax burdens not only on the poor but on all consumers. . . . Apparently, HST opponents prefer to pay their taxes in hidden, covert ways rather than in the highly visible manner of a value-added tax.

“Before casting their stones against the impending HST, critics should take a closer look at the decrepit and crumbling structure called the retail sales tax — the tax that they are implicitly supporting.”

Meanwhile, trying to work on that “public acceptability” issue, Hansen made the most of a few hours here Friday, speaking first to a couple of hundred delegates to the Southern Interior Local Government Association — consisting of mayors and councillors from the B.C. heartland — at Sun Peaks.

Then, with Lake in tow, he drove into town for a Kamloops Chamber of Commerce luncheon, followed by a one-on-one with the chamber board.

He did well, considering the challenge. He denied the government ever promised in the last election not to bring in the GST, saying the closest the Liberals came during the campaign was saying that “The HST is not contemplated in the B.C. Liberal election platform.”

That may be the finest parsing of words since Bill Clinton vowed with a straight face that he’d “never had sexual relations with that woman.” What Hansen neglected to mention was that, if the Liberals were thinking at all about the HST, it might have been fair to mention it during the campaign.

“There’s no question the (anti-HST) campaign has built up a head of steam,” he said, but quickly added that the anti-HST movement is spreading a lot of misinformation. He pointed to several parts of the pamphlet being used by the anti campaign, saying it claims home heating, legal fees, rent and strata fees will all cost more. Not true, he said.

Of course, Hansen has an interest in pamphlets these days, being turned down by Elections B.C. just this week on his plan to do a pamphlet of his own. The apparent reason is that he left it too late.

Indeed, it looks very much as if the government has left its explanation of why the HST is a good thing much too late.

An Angus Reid poll a couple of weeks ago showed that more than 80 per cent are willing to throw in with Bill Vander Zalm and sign the anti-HST petition. It seems near impossible to stop it, which will put the B.C. Liberals in an embarrassing and awkward position. They’ll very probably have to ignore the wishes of the people as they struggle with the constitutional and contractual conundrum that will result.

That, in turn, could trigger recall and, at the least, a huge problem that could be fatal in the next election.

There’s a certain attraction to putting a government over your knee and giving it a sound spanking. Yet, at the same time, we may be biting off our own nose to spite our face.