After speaking about the Harmonized Sales Tax

(HST), gaming grants and the provincial budget at Saturday’s meeting in the United Church, Bruce Ralston, New Democrat finance critic, fielded several questions from the 14 residents in the audience.

HST Q&A

Q: If the New Democratic Party (NDP) were in power, would they maintain it or scrap the HST after the five-year agreement ended?

A: Noting the government has signed a preliminary agreement and still needs to pass legislation to make it law, Ralston said if the government wanted to get out of the agreement, it would have to “pay the $1.6 billion back at least and any other cost the federal government incurred in implementing the agreement.”

He added there are options available if people want to get rid of the HST.

If enough government MLAs listened to their constituents and their concerns about the HST and voted against the legislation, he said, and it didn’t pass, then it wouldn’t come into effect.

Ralston noted there are people working at putting a referendum together and if enough people voted against it, MLAs would respect the public’s decision.

Now is the time to fight the HST, he said, because it’s “very difficult to get out of, especially in the first five years.”

Olympic costs

Q: Do you have any ballpark figures on the cost of the Olympics, including the cost of the Sea to Sky Highway?

A: Ralston said the Auditor General John Doyle has been “in major back-and-forth with the government about the real cost of the Olympics” for at least five years.

The government has a weird way of accounting the Olympic costs, Ralston said, and then listed some of the items that the B.C. Liberal government doesn’t consider Olympic costs:

• The Olympic Secretariat, the organization in charge of running the Olympics in British Columbia.

• New $20-million road to the Callaghan Valley, the site of the Whistler Olympic Park where the Nordic events will be held.

• Sea to Sky Highway, which was integral to the success of the Vancouver bid, is not considered an Olympic cost.

• Olympic Torch Relay that the provincial government is paying for.

Ralston added tickets for Crown corporations and MLAs are being considered as revenue but are, in fact, Olympic costs.

“For years, they have been saying the cost for the Olympics was going to be $600 million all in. They now say it’s going to be $746 million, but there are millions of dollars that have been spent but they don’t count it as costs.”

On the flip side, Ralston said he believes the positive side of the Olympics is “it inspires young people and that’s a good thing.”