Anti-HST recall campaign kicks off

Opponents of B.C.'s HST are launching their first recall campaign against Liberal cabinet minister Ida Chong in the Vancouver Island riding of Oak Bay-Gordon Head on Tuesday.

Organizer Colin Nielsen says the 160 volunteers have 60 days to collect more than 15,000 signatures from those who were eligible to vote in riding in the last provincial election.

Nielsen says he's confident they will reach their goal and have learned their lessons from the anti-HST referendum campaign this past spring.

"We've learned a lot from the No HST campaign.  People were constantly looking but couldn't find us. So now we're going to their homes, systematically," he said.

"We're going to be on the streets and we have open offices they can come to. We never had that during the No HST," he said.

Meanwhile, Ida Chong says she plans to fight back by making constituents aware of the hard work she's done for her riding since first being elected 14 years ago.

Not waiting for referendum

This past summer anti-HST campaigners gathered enough signatures on a petition to force Premier Gordon Campbell to say he would honour the results of a referendum scheduled for next September on the fate of the HST.

But Nielson says the recall volunteers don't want to wait until next fall to get rid of the HST, so they plan to target Chong and other Liberal MLA's in coming months with recall campaigns in an attempt to force the government to repeal the new sales tax.

"We would like to see the referendum not even have to take place because public opinion polls have consistently shown that more than 70 per cent of people want to get rid of it," he said.

"So why does the government want to spend $30 million on a referendum that they already know the answer to?" he said.

B.C.'s 12 per cent HST was introduced to replace the seven per cent PST and five per cent GST in July.