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Poll: 42% of Vancouver Point Grey voters would recall Campbell

As thousands of British Columbians rallied to protest the Harmonized Sales Tax, a new poll indicated Premier Gordon Campbell is deeply unpopular in his own home riding.

A B.C. Federation of Labour news release this morning cited a new Environics Poll showing 42 percent of voters in Vancouver Point Grey would sign a petition to recall Campbell, including a quarter of those who voted for him in May.

The release also said:

An overwhelming number (79 percent) believed the Premier should have told British Columbians that his government was going to introduce the tax prior to the election.

When told that the tax collected from consumers through the HST would all go to corporations instead of being used to pay for better government programs, 64 percent (including 59 percent of BC Liberal voters) said they were now even more opposed to the HST.

On the critical issue of whether or not British Columbians would support modest tax increases in order to pay for needed government services -- the poll found a large majority (78 percent) would support an increase.

... This finding crossed all political lines, with 74 percent of Liberals also coming out in support of the proposition that taxes should be increased to support public services.

CBC British Columbia ran a brief report Saturday afternoon, saying thousands of people had turned out for at least 15 anti-HST rallies, including one at the convention centre where both NDP leader Carole James and former Socred premier Bill Vander Zalm spoke against the tax.

The Vancouver Sun by late Saturday afternoon had nothing on the rallies. The Saturday Globe and Mail ran an editorial supporting the HST, but this afternoon ran a story by The Canadian Press covering the protests.

Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.

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