CameronT120 said it well. If we rid the HST. Ontario would gain big time, think of the business Ontario would gain, the film industry will move lock stock and barrel,manufactured products will be more costly to make in BC and companies will move East. If u really look at the numbers, many items are already PST taxed and the extra items now affected by the HST is not that bad. There is also a HST rebate for some people. Life is give and take, no pain no gain.
If we go back to the old system BC will be less competitive and the net effect will be businesses moving out of BC to Ontario.
Whatever the liberals did was for the good of the province, their problem was the way they handled the situation. If I was premier I would have done it differently. I would maybe drop the HST to 11% or 10% making the provincial portion of the tax lower by 1 0r 2 % . Perhaps that would make the pill easier to swallow.
Remember the decade we had NDP rule businesses moved out of BC and the economy was in the tank. If this is repeated again, the same scenario would be replayed again. Seriously, do you think the NDP can manage the province better? Don't let history repeat itself again.
Sorry, but that's not the facts. Too many good folks are influenced by the Kampbell Kool Aid. Are you including the increase in public debt over the last decade as that's gone up 40% or so? Here's a few points worth looking at.
In the 1980s, Social Credit governments led by Bill Bennett and Bill Vander Zalm received three special equalization payments from Ottawa. Bennett got the first such payment, for $139 million, in 1983/84, and a second for $35 million in 1984/85. Vander Zalm obtained $360,000 in 1986/87.
The NDP garnered a single equalization transfer, of $125 million, in 1999/2000.
Gordon Campbell's BC Liberals, in contrast, received five such payments: $158 million in 2001/02; $543 million in 2002/03; $979 million in 2004/05; $590 million in 2005/06; and $459 million in 2006/07. (So huge were these transfers, that B.C. actually had to re-pay an overpayment of $330 million in 2003/04.)
The New Democrats got a total of $125 million in equalization; Gordon Campbell's BC Liberals, a total of $2.4 billion.