Former British Columbia premier Bill Vander Zalm is never boring. But if you think this dynamo was an attention-getter when he ran the province from 1986 to 1991, you should see what he’s up to now.

He’s still the same snappy dresser who accessorizes his wardrobe with a flashy smile and his signature expression — “Fantastic!” — but now Vander Zalm is back in B.C.’s political spotlight.

This time he’s heading a surprisingly strong, provincewide taxpayer revolt against the B.C. Liberals and Premier Gordon Campbell, who on July 1 implemented the harmonized sales tax. Similar to Ontario’s new HST, the B.C. version replaces the 7% provincial sales tax and the 5% federal GST with the 12% HST.

But the HST covers many more items than the old PST did — restaurant food, home repairs, fees for professionally managed investment portfolios, funerals, etc. It’s shifting an annual tax burden of about $2 billion from businesses to consumers.

Naturally, the B.C. government says the HST is like cod-liver oil — it tastes bad but it’s good for you. The HST is supposed to save B.C. businesses $2 billion annually, and this saving is supposed to be passed back to consumers. Few taxpayers are buying that argument.

But what has B.C. taxpayers so incensed is the way the tax was introduced. As B.C.’s Liberals campaigned their way to a third consecutive term in May 2009, nary a mention was made of the HST. Actually, the Liberals specifically said they’d never do such a thing.

But mere days after the election, Victoria began talks with Ottawa on adopting the HST, which, by the way, included a $1.6-billion federal “signing bonus” to cover transition costs. Campbell’s government was caught lying to the electorate, which certainly captured Vander Zalm’s attention.

Using his old populist appeal, and the B.C. Recall and Initiative Act, Vander Zalm has mounted a brilliant anti-HST campaign that ultimately has collected more than 700,000 signatures provincewide in an effort to force the B.C. government to revoke the tax.

The petition has now been presented formally to Elections B.C., and the numbers come close to equalling all the votes collected by the Liberals in the last election.

Whether this groundbreaking petition can actually overturn the HST remains unclear. But, in response to a recent move by B.C. business groups in asking the courts to rule the petition invalid, Vander Zalm’s group has now filed its own court action claiming the B.C. government failed to implement the merged tax constitutionally.

“In every province in Canada that [has] adopted the HST, it was their legislatures that enacted the tax, involving the whole democratic process,” Vander Zalm says, “not simply a stroke of the finance minister’s pen.”

While these actions are tied up in court, Vander Zalm is proceeding under B.C.’s recall legislation to have 24 targeted Liberal MLAs removed. It’s no coincidence that 21 of the 24 seats of the MLAs targeted are in regions where the old federal Reform Party — known for its anti-tax sentiments — was very strong. It’s a tall order, but the anti-HST petition’s success was a long shot, too.

Finally, Vander Zalm’s success is raising serious doubts about Campbell’s leadership. Vander Zalm has also bounced Carole James, leader of the Opposition’s New Democratic Party, off the front pages. Vander Zalm is in charge of the anti-HST fight, not the NDP.

His return is shaking up politics in B.C. It’s already leading to talk of resignation by Campbell or James — or both — and may, others speculate, prompt the rise of a third party in time for B.C.’s 2013 election.

Vander Zalm may soon have a bigger impact on B.C. politics than he did as premier. “Fantastic,” he’d probably say.

IE