BC Referendum going ahead

The citizens of B.C. are having their say! In June there will be distributed, by mail, to all citizens, ballots along with the pros and cons about the controversial HST tax instituted behind their backs by the current B.C. government. This has been a long time in coming, but due to stupendous efforts by former premier Bill Van der Zalm. He and a huge bunch of helpers were required to gather up signed petitions from ten% of citizens in all the 90 or so ridings of B.C. to fulfill the daunting requirements of the Direct Democracy law passed in the late '90s. Under that law the government was supposed to put an issue upon a province-wide referendum, if such a petition was submitted to it. Somehow, over 600,000 names were obtained, well beyond the required threshold. But, the government was very slow to react. A court case, which was unsuccessful, was even brought by unhappy businesses. VanderZalm had to threaten to commence actions of his own to decertify a sitting member or two - before the government caved in to the wishes of their citizens. It will be interesting now to see the results of such a referendum. No other province has such laws yet, permitting a say on issues by their citizens.