November 12, 2009

NDP By-election a Win Against the HST
NDP MP introduces motion to stop the HST in BC

(Kamloops) When Fin Donnelly strides into Parliament as the new MP for New Westminster-Coquitlam he will have been put there partly as a result of the backlash in BC about the proposed Harmonized Sales Tax.

Local NDP candidate Michael Crawford, who worked on Donnelly’s campaign, knows that voters chose Donnelly because he has worked tirelessly on issues as a municipal councillor but also that the HST is despised in BC and voters supported the NDP's position on the regressive tax.

“Poll after poll tells us that British Columbians do not want Prime Minister Harper and BC Premier Campbell to force the HST on us, and my door-knocking in Coquitlam last weekend confirms it” said Crawford. “The tax will increase the cost of goods every family needs and it will do so at a time when so many people are struggling to make ends meet”.

Provincial and federal New Democrats are working to stop the HST.

Last week New Democrat Bill Siksay, MP for Burnaby-Douglas, tabled a motion to stop the Harmonized Sales Tax from being implemented in BC by cancelling a $1.6 billion federal incentive payment to the BC government.

The text of Siksay’s motion reads “That, in the opinion of the House, the government should give immediate notice to the Government of British Columbia that it no longer plans to introduce legislative measures to enable the implementation of a harmonized sales tax (HST) and that it plans to cancel its $1.6 billion offer to establish the HST in that province”.

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