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Fight HST kicks off recall in Ida Chong's Oak Bay-Gordon Head riding

Oak Bay-Gordon Head MLA Ida Chong didn’t win the tongue-in-cheek “MLA Survivor Recall” contest, but the B.C. cabinet minister won the dubious honour as the first target of the recall campaign trying to force the provincial Liberal government to kill the reviled Harmonized Sales Tax.
Organizers Bill Vander Zalm, Chris Delaney and Bill Tieleman gathered on the steps of the B.C. Supreme Court to announce the campaign to oust Chong from office will begin Nov. 22 and involve about 600 canvassers. including volunteers from the neighbouring ridings of Saanich North and the Islands and Comox Valley.
The canvassers will have four to six weeks to gather 18,000 signatures to recall Chong, the Minister of Science and Universities. If recall succeeds, a byelection would then have to be called.
Chong won by a slim 561-vote margin, so fits the bill for a recallable MLA.
Though she finished fourth in the “Survivor” contest, several factors led to her being chosen as the first recall target.
In Oak Bay-Gordon Head, there are a lot of retirees and people who head south after Christmas.
“A lot of them [supporters] had expressed a desire to sign the petition before they left so the organizers there elected to go right away,” said Delaney.
Oak Bay recall organizer Colin Nielsen, a 64-year-old former RCMP officer, also volunteered on the HST initiative petition.
He’s as dedicated to the recall as he was to fighting the HST.
“I voted Liberal in the last election, but I did not vote for the HST,” said Nielsen.
“It’s simply about accountability and honesty.”
Another reason for Oak Bay going first is that a group of the canvassers also wanted to work in the recall campaigns in Environment Minister Murray Coell’s Saanich North riding.
“We have some real warriors,” said Neilsen.
The actual winner of the “Survivor” contest was Donna Barnett in the cool Cariboo-Chilcotin riding.
The Cariboo weather was not conducive to going door-to-door.
“They said December and January are the coldest months up there,” said Delaney. “They elected to go fourth.”
Kamloop North’s Terry Lake finished second, Don McRae in Comox Valley was third, Chong fourth, and Coell fifth.
Chong has not replied to a request for an interview.
The recall campaign was born out of the Fight HST organization, which gathered more than 700,000 signatures demanding the provincial government to repeal the tax.
In a way, the Fight HST organization has already been instrumental in recalling Premier Gordon Campbell, who recently announced his resignation and named the poorly-managed rollout of the HST as one of his reasons for stepping down.
“The plan is to hit the riding hard leading up to the holidays, take a short break at Christmas, and then finish the riding petition in the first and second week of January,” said Vander Zalm, the former Social Credit premier. “Then we’ll send the same army of canvassers over to Comox Valley and Saanich North and repeat the process.”
Other ridings announced for potential recalls include Kamloops North, Cariboo-Chilcotin, Maple Ridge and Vancouver-Quilchena.

MrGrant

今天的报纸


By Harry Cossey, Times Colonist November 19, 2010


MLA Ida Chong seems to have missed the point about why she she is a recall target and who is involved.

Ever since Bill Vander Zalm started the Anti-HST campaign he has been after the Campbell government for its attitude and arrogance, and the NDP wisely stayed in the background.

Campbell has chosen to resign rather than face a very annoyed electorate. Now that he is gone, the campaign is going after the Campbell sycophants still in the government.

Chong says that she has worked hard and, in the past, she might have. But in the more recent past she has ignored the wishes of those in her riding by following the party line.

She said little or nothing regarding the sale of B.C. Rail, the abandonment of the forest lands from Sooke to Jordan River or the HST. When I wrote to her asking that she do something in regard to saving Oak Bay Lodge, I received no reply.

It's said that "as ye sow, so ye shall reap."