The campaign to recall BC Liberal MLAs to protest the harmonized sales tax will now target Premier Gordon Campbell and Finance Minister Colin Hansen, Fight HST leader Bill Vander Zalm says.
The former premier told CTV News on Friday that since documents surfaced this week revealing that the provincial government was mulling the HST long before the 2009 election, he's been inundated with phone calls and emails from across the province.
"Recall, recall, recall -- that's all we hear," Vander Zalm said.
The anti-HST campaign announced last month that, beginning in November, it would turn its attention to a push to recall Liberal MLAs across the province.
But that campaign was intended to target Liberals known to have a shaky hold on their constituents -- mostly in rural and northern ridings, according to Vander Zalm.
"We're having to look at places now that we didn't think were so practical, including Gordon Campbell and Colin Hansen's constituencies," he said.
But Vander Zalm maintains that the recall campaign isn't about overthrowing the government, but rather convincing the Liberals to throw out the HST.
"We never intended to replace government. We just wanted to keep putting the pressure on," he said.
In an interview with CTV News on Friday, Hansen said that he is concerned about the campaign to recall MLAs.
"I think everybody has to be," he said. "We did, from the outset, recognize that adopting the harmonized sales tax was going to be very difficult to do, politically."
But Hansen added that he still believes people could change their minds about the tax. He said he's often approached by angry constituents, to whom he explains the benefits of the HST.
"Usually they start to look at it from a different light by the end of the conversation," Hansen said.
Watch CTV News at Six for a full report from Peter Grainger
