By Michael Smyth March 3, 2010

The HST doublecross inflicted on B.C. voters after last year’s election triggered some of the lamest excuses and spin-jobs I’ve ever seen from government.

Premier Gordon Campbell gave us one of the classics when explaining why the Liberals promised during the May election not to bring in the harmonized sales tax, only to betray voters after they were re-elected.

“It wasn’t on our radar screen,” said Campbell, who insisted the government only dreamt up the HST after the election was over.

Whatever.

Then there was the excuse that British Columbia had to bring in an HST because Ontario was doing it, too, so we had to match them to stay competitive.

Just one problem there: Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty began talking about that province’s HST in January 2009 — four months before a B.C. election campaign in which Campbell’s Liberals insisted they had no plan to introduce the tax in British Columbia.

Lame, lame, lame!

But now we have the most laughable attempt yet to justify the Liberals’ gold medal for flip-flops.

On Tuesday, Finance Minister Colin Hansen announced in his budget that he will introduce a new law requiring all HST revenue to be dedicated to health-care spending.

“It’s an accountability measure,” Hansen said, explaining the new law would show British Columbians their tax dollars are going toward critical public services. Hansen said the government would allocate $3.7 billion of HST revenue to health care this year.

Dressing up the HST as a health-care-protection tax could help the Liberal party survive voter anger at election time.

But here’s the joke: The HST is supposed to be “revenue neutral” to government.

Although the HST will slam consumers with billions of dollars in new costs, businesses will be able to claim HST rebates and get their money back.

The HST will also replace revenue currently collected under the provincial sales tax, which will be phased out.

That $3.7 billion Hansen talked about Tuesday is grossly misleading.

Throw in all the rebates and writeoffs and the elimination of the PST, and the government will actually collect $113 million less total revenue under the HST.

The HST is actually a tax-burden transfer from business to consumers, and will not a generate a dime to pay for new public services.

Yet Hansen is preparing to pass a law that will try to argue the HST will generate billions of dollars for health care — one of the most deceptive tricks yet with this stab-in-the-back tax.

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