B.C. anti-HST petition hits critical milestone

Opponents of the harmonized sales tax in B.C. say they have reached a crucial milestone — 300,000 people have now signed the petition, representing 10 per cent of the province's registered voters.

Chris Delaney, one of the lead organizers of the campaign to repeal the HST, says volunteers gathered 155,000 signatures for the initiative petition over the last week alone.

But he said there is more work to be done to reach Election B.C.'s required threshold of 10 per cent of registered voters in each of the province's 85 electoral districts.

So far, the volunteers in 44 ridings have collected enough signatures to reach the 10 per cent threshold, and 17 of those ridings have topped 15 per cent, said Delaney.

The campaigners have about two months left to collect the rest of the required signatures in the remaining ridings if they wish to trigger a province-wide vote on the new tax.

Former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm has been spearheading the campaign to repeal the B.C. Liberal governments decision to unify the provincial and federal sales taxes into a single, 12 per cent tax, effective July 1.