B.C. Referendum update - Motivation for it

More info from former Premier Bill Vander Zalm about British Columbia's Referendum law:
It seems that this legislation (to see whether referendums were something that the people in B.C. would want) was developed originally over concerns about Prime Minister Mulroney's efforts to force upon the Canadian people the ideas emanating from the 1987 Meech Lake Accord.
It seems that an otherwise required unanimous premier approval for the constitutional changes being proposed could not be obtained, because in B.C. the then NDP premier, Mike Harcourt, would not legally give such approval without first "taking it to the people". And so Mulroney decided to over-ride such requirement by taking it to all Canadians. This was via a national referendum - called the Charlottetown accord. That was in early 1991.
That national referendum, basically the first one since 1917, failed however, virtually all across the country.
Vander Zalm did not want this sort of Canada-wide potential dictatorship to ever occur again and proposed the B.C. provincial referendum law. However, before he could see to its adoption, he was ousted and a new leader took over.
This was Rita Johnston. She was apparently convinced by the bureaucracy to first put the idea for greater and more direct democracy to the electorate - a referendum to approve referendums. As Bill V. said to me -"the bureaucracies and most politicians are not fond of direct democracy". After much bickering from the two other parties this proposal was finally put to a vote. It passed - by an over 85% margin. B.C. people clearly wanted to be better consulted sometimes.
Still, the then NDP government had to write the rules. After two years of niggling, they came out with such which were much too daunting to really work. In 1995 their law required ten % of the voters from every one of the 89 provincial constituencies to approve the idea of a specific referendum question within 90 days before such proposed referendum would need be put to a vote. Until the recent , very much objected HST tax law, about which Vander Zalm and others were able to mount a successful campaign, no other B.C. citizen initiative has been able to obtain that too difficult ten% threshold. But, they did, and now the government must withdraw their hated HST law, or put it, as requested, to a referendum. The people's democratic will may yet be victorious.