This letter is in response to the letter by Roy Summerhayes (The News, Aug. 30).
Roy, please in the future, use reality and facts before you consider commenting.
The public who are reading these comments were not born yesterday.
The HST referendum result is drastically short of what would have been needed to the kill the tax if former premier Campbell had not changed the threshold for success under the Recall and Initiative Act brought in under the former provincial NDP government.
Under those initial rules, the Fight HST campaign would have needed 50 per cent of all eligible voters in British Columbia — or about 1.5 million people — to vote in favour of killing the tax in order for the HST to be scrapped.
If the rules had been applied, the August 26, 2011 tally would have failed by more than 640,000 votes.
Former premier and Fight HST head Bill Vander Zalm went so far as to thank former premier Campbell for these changes, because if they were not made, there is no way the HST would have been defeated.
New Democrat leader Adrian Dix on the other hand, has chosen not to comment on this topic, as the old rules were originally initiated by the former NDP government.
Dalton McGuinty, the premier of Ontario who also brought in the HST on July 1, 2010, commented after the HST vote in British Columbia that: “Steady as she goes, HST has stabilized the Ontario economy, with more new jobs this year than anywhere else in the rest of Canada.”
They have the advantage.
Joe Sawchuk
Duncan