May 25, 2011
HST changes may be too little too late
The Daily News poll on the HST has been up for just a short while, but already I’m detecting a trend — and it doesn’t look good for the B.C. Liberals.
They’ve promised to lower the HST to 10 per cent from 12 per cent over the next three years. Another sweetener is payments of $175 to seniors and families with children.
Anger over the HST, and how it was introduced, has subsided in the past few months, and some people are seeing that it hasn’t affected their lives as drastically has they had feared. But there is still a hard core of opposition — much of it based on principle — that won’t be swayed. And it looks like that hard core will be enough to sink the tax.
At this point, The Daily News poll show 40 per cent responding with “the HST is just plain wrong” and another 20 per cent agreeing that it “sounds like bribery.” That’s a total of 60 per cent who remain opposed to the HST or who are at least cynical about any attempts to make it more palatable.
That’s the bad news. The glimmer of good news is that about 35 per cent say that a rate of 10 per cent seems reasonable and the rest appear open to persuasion. So there is some hope for the B.C. Liberals.
My hunch is that while some minds can be changed, it won’t be quite enough.