Richmond came out swinging against the HST, according to the referendum results, which were announced Friday.
In Richmond East, 65.6 per cent of the residents voted yes to scratching the HST; Richmond Centre saw a 63.8 per cent yes vote; Steveston-Richmond was a little less adamant with 55.2 per cent voting yes to scrapping the sales tax.
The three ridings together put Richmond in about 22nd place out of 85 ridings in terms of its opposition to the tax, with 61.3 voting yes and 38.7 voting no.
"It was fantastic to see how people really cared about this.
They actually got out of their chairs and said 'count me in.' One voice matters, and I hope this is a trend of things to come," said Jean Sickman, the regional organizer for Richmond's initiative against the HST.
This was the first time in B.C. history that a grassroots organization has challenged a significant government tax policy, and won.
However, fears of B.C. following the example of some American states, where citizen's initiatives are held on a regular basis, are unfounded, according to Sickman.
"It's just too hard to do." Sickman, who is a director with the Council of Senior Citizens Organizations of B.C., agreed to take on the job of spearheading the Richmond initiative not because she's anti-tax, but because, to her, this tax is "regressive," meaning that lower income people pay proportionally more than do higher income earners.
Also, the HST was implemented on the heels of various corporate tax cuts.
"This was a transfer of the tax burden from big business to the ordinary citizen," said Sickman.
Tax cuts to big business have been promoted by the Liberal government as a way of keeping the B.C. economy competitive and stimulating job growth. However, Sickman argues that most of those corporate savings "trickle into corporate pockets and stay there.
"All those business representatives talking on talk shows right now, saying how this is going to harm business, not one has said anything about how that money had allowed them to create more jobs or lower prices."
Richmond MLA John Yap said he is disappointed with the result.
"But the people have spoken and I will support Plan B, to move back to the PST/ GST program."
But he believes that despite his party's loss, the Liberal's campaign was relatively successful.
"It ended up closer, considering it began at more of an 80/20 split."
Sasha Peters, a financial advisor, number cruncher and self-confessed political junky, writes a political blog, B.C. 2013, which attempts to illustrate patterns and correlations.
Peters, who has also worked on numerous campaigns in Richmond, including that of Alice Wong's, found that generally ridings that voted yes to scratching the HST had one or more of three characteristics: it's an NDP riding, it's lower income or it's rural.
Richmond fits none of those criteria, yet turned out one of the highest yes votes.
Yap said he's not sure why Richmond strongly supported scratching the HST, or if the city's large Asian community was a factor.
Peters believes the Liberals didn't do themselves any favours in the campaign either.
"There was so much spin - to the point of being counter productive."
And while it helped that the government offered to lower the percentage by two per cent over two years, "they could have lowered it by five per cent and it wouldn't have helped. People just lost trust and the government looked desperate."
And while the sales tax will be scratched, it won't happen tomorrow, said Yap.
"It will take about 18 months for the government to unwind the HST."
In the meantime, the government will have to look for other streams of revenue to maintain the services people want, Yap said.
"All revenue options have to be reviewed whether it be consumption tax or income tax, but we need to maintain a competitive tax system that's how we maintain a competitive economy."
Sickman agrees money needs to be found, but added that keeping an economy "competitive" doesn't just mean maintaining low corporate taxes.
She said she is confident the new NDP leader, Adrian Dix, will put forward a proposal that will balance the tax burden between individuals and big business more fairly.
