Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan. The Canadian Press. It is said he was not as enthusiastic about the HST as Premier McGuinty (looking on from the left here).

You could say that current plots to “harmonize” the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) with the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) into one more efficient HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) are only afoot in two of Canada’s 10 provinces – and thus of only slight interest Canada-wide.

But the two provinces involved, Ontario and British Columbia, together account for more than half the country’s population. And in both places what has quickly become a “Hated Sales Tax” (HST) has shown unexpected if hardly surprising potential to stir up virulent waves of popular opposition in economic hard times.

You could equally say this opposition is largely beside the point. Another four Canadian provinces – Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador – have already harmonized the GST with their PSTs. And, now that Ontario has just today passed HST legislation, with BC “expected to follow suit early in the new year,” by July 1, 2010 more than 80% of all Canadians, in six provinces, will likely be covered by such arrangements.

Moreover, both the current Ontario and BC Liberal governments have comfortable enough majorities in their legislatures – with next fixed-date elections still a few years away. So, folks, complain as much as you like. Your provincial governments think this is good for you. They have the political horsepower to do it. And your earliest opportunity to take it from them is far enough away that they think you will by then have forgotten the whole thing.

Opinion polls, political parties, and the Governor General in Ottawa

Anti-HST signs at a rally in Vancouver this past September. Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, Canwest News Service.

Even so, the force of the apparent resentment against the new “Hated Sales Tax” in both Ontario and BC has been striking. An Ipsos Reid poll released just last week showed “82 per cent of BC residents and 74 per cent of their Ontario counterparts oppose plans by the two provincial governments to impose the harmonized sales tax.”

In both provinces this HST protest has also helped opposition parties soar  in at least some recent opinion polls.  A November Angus Reid poll in BC “found 47 % of respondents support the NDP, compared to 33% who preferred the Liberals. Ten per cent backed the Greens, and seven per cent the Conservatives.” An Angus Reid poll in Ontario just last week found that “the opposition Progressive Conservatives (41%) now hold a 14-point advantage over the incumbent Liberals (27%) … The NDP is third with 20 %, followed by the Green Party with 11%.”

Ontario First Nations chiefs say they plan to launch an indefinite campaign of direct, legal and political action unless they are exempt from a new harmonized sales tax set to take affect in the province next year. Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, Vancouver Province.

HST opposition has helped fuel recent aboriginal protests in both provinces too. But the most intriguing development may be former BC premier Bill Vander Zalm’s bizarre attempt to appeal federal government enabling legislation for the BC (and Ontario) HST plans to Governor General Michaelle Jean in Ottawa! In fact this legislation has almost completed its journey through the parliamentary maze. But Mr. Vander Zalm, who is “leading the fight against the implementation of the harmonized sales tax” in his province, has asked Governor General Jean “to withhold royal assent for the HST legislation when it arrives on her desk.”

Mr. Vander Zalm believes that both the bill itself and “the process that was used to bring it in” are unconstitutional, under “Section 92 of the Constitution Act 1867,” which “clearly stipulates that only the provincial legislatures have the jurisdiction to make laws concerning the raising of a revenue via direct taxation for provincial purposes in Canada.” He wanted the Governor General to “investigate” the constitutionality of the federal legislation – before signing the bill into law.

What would you have done if you were Governor General?

Governor General Michaelle Jean has rejected an appeal from former BC. premier Bill Vander Zalm to look into the constitutionality of HST legislation. Chris Wattie/Reuters.

As “de facto head of state” – or at least the person who nowadays actually does sign bills into law, and otherwise exercise the offshore constitutional monarch’s so-called “reserve powers” under our Constitution Act 1867 –  there is quite arguably little doubt that Governor General Jean does have the theoretical power to do what former BC premier Bill Vander Zalm has asked. But who (other than Mr. Vander Zalm apparently) can be remotely surprised that instead: “She got back to us right away and said, ‘Go see [BC Premier] Gordon Campbell’”?

Mr. Vander Zalm himself claims to have been “stunned” by this development: “I think our democratic process has completely disappeared … I mean, 85% of the people oppose this tax, it has never been ratified by the BC legislature and it is unconstitutional, in my opinion, to enact this legislation without an amendment to the constitution.” When, however, was the last time a Governor General of Canada did the kind of thing that Mr. Vander Zalm has asked from the excellent Mme Jean?

Now Mr. Vander Zalm’s “Fight HST group is raising money to have their concerns heard in court.” Which does seem like the kind of thing they ought they to have done in the first place, if they want to challenge the constitutionality of the federal legislation. (Except of course taking such things to court is more expensive than just writing a letter to the Governor General.)

Yet there just may be something more serious to Mr. Vander Zalm’s proposal than even he realizes. (Or who knows? Maybe he does?) When you start thinking about it, the rambunctious former BC premier just may have begun some kind of modest precedent for some future quite constructive constitutional evolution in Canada.

The head of state’s power to call a referendum before signing bills into law in Ireland

Mary McAleese, the current President of Ireland – an office in direct descent from the former Governor General of Ireland.

In the current republic (but continuing British-style parliamentary democracy) of Ireland, e.g., the largely ceremonial president who has replaced the Governor General of the old British dominion of Ireland actually does have the written-down power to “decline to sign into law a bill … he/she considers to be of great ‘national importance’ until it has been approved by either the people in an ordinary referendum or by” a parliament freshly chosen in “a general election.”

In fact, this power has never been used in Ireland, because it also requires “a petition signed by a majority of the membership of the Senate” – which has never been forthcoming. But its mere existence in principle can set you to wondering about some less complicated version in a future Canada that has finally grown up and severed all its remaining strictly symbolic ties with the British monarchy, and more democratically reformed the office of the Governor General in the process. (As Ireland and India and other such places have already done.)

A future reformed governor general or otherwise designated Canadian ceremonial head of state with some kind of recognized power to call a popular referendum before signing especially contentious legislation of Canada-wide importance into law just might help make our political system more democratic than it is today.

And many of us who would not otherwise agree with Bill Vander Zalm about anything else under the sun might at least concede that this could be a very good thing. It is easy of course to think of countless reasons why it will never come to pass. But stranger things actually have happened in history – even in Canada. Whatever the former premier of Canada’s beautiful Pacific province has been smoking, it could eventually redound to the benefit of everyone in the Canadian “free and democratic society,” so nicely alluded to in the Constitution Act 1982.