Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Worse than Point Grey

This week's figures on HST petition signatures are out.

Burnaby-Deer Lake, an NDP held riding, has the lowest rate of petition signatures per capita of any riding in the province with only 1.7% of the registered voters in the riding. It is trailed by Vancouver-Point Grey which has 1.8% of the signatures in the riding.

In order for the petition to be approved, 10% of the registered voters in each of the 85 ridings need to sign the petition. With eight weeks to go, Fight HST claims it has hit its target in 56 ridings. As the days wind down, the focus will shift to about a dozen urban ridings, likely including at least Burnaby-Deer Lake and Burnaby-Lougheed which have some of the lowest response rates in the province. The high number of apartment buildings and the large English-as-a-second-language populations in many of these ridings appear to be significant hurdles to the Fight HST campaigners who have found incredible success in many other parts of B.C.