After months of public backlash over the HST, the provincial government is advertising how the new tax will benefit business.
In a news release issued Wednesday entitled Look Who’s Backing the HST, the B.C. Liberals listed quotes from business people around the province who are backing the province’s newest tax.
“I don’t know why we didn’t do it ages ago,” Christine Dendy of Dendy Orchards in Kelowna, said in the release. “It’s much simpler. It makes us a little more profitable, which is something that all of agriculture could do with right now.”
The news release also included quotes from representatives of the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association, the Mining Association of B.C. and the hospitality industry. The government has also posted a number of videos on its website about how the HST will benefit the provincial economy.
The new tax takes effect July 1.
A few weeks ago former minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources Blair Lekstrom resigned over the HST.
BIV spoke with his successor, Bill Bennett, about the tax last week.
He supports the HST and believes it will have positive effects for the province’s resource-based industries. But he also conceded the government did a poor job rolling it out.
Bennett said: “I admit that we have done an absolutely horrible job of implementing the new policy and we’re paying for that. I think we owe people an apology – the public an apology – for the way we have implemented it, but that doesn’t undermine the value of the actual public policy.”
For more with Bennett check out this week’s print edition of BIV.