VANCOUVER—British Columbia voters will be the first in Canada to get a chance to overturn the harmonized sales tax.

A legislative committee opted Monday to take the issue to a referendum next year. The committee, made up of six Liberal MLAs in government and four from the Opposition NDP, was set up to consider what to do after 700,000 people signed a petition opposing the tax.

The HST came into effect in British Columbia on July 1, combining the federal and provincial sales tax into a single 12 per cent tax.

The NDP had wanted the matter to go to a vote in the legislature but were outvoted by the Liberals. The second option, the one ultimately approved, was to take the matter to the public for a vote on Sept. 24, 2011.

But organizers of the petition denounced the move. Former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm stormed out of the legislative committee room Monday afternoon after the unanimous decision.

“This is a crazy place,” said a furious Vander Zalm after leaving the room. “This is the biggest scam I’ve ever witnessed.”

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell said Monday he is confident residents will see the benefits of the HST but if a majority of voters are still against the tax and vote that way, the government will change its policy.

Terry Lake, the Liberal chair of the committee, said in an interview that taking the issue to the voters is the right thing to do. Elections B.C. officials told the committee Monday that the cost of holding the vote next year will be between $12 million and $30 million which Lake said was much less than the hundreds of millions originally estimated.

“There’s been a lot of people who’ve been concerned about this policy but that was less than 20 per cent,” Lake said. “What do the other 80 per cent think?”

Lake was referring to the 15 per cent of voters in each riding who the anti-HST organizers signed up in the petition.

In order for the tax to be overturned, 50 per cent of registered voters must cast a ballot in favour of ditching the tax, with 50 per cent of voters in two thirds of the 85 ridings voting against the HST.

That requirement is too high, said Chris Delaney, one of the chief organizers behind the petition drive.

“This was the attempt of the government to destroy the will of the people. That threshold is next to impossible to achieve so this was their nuclear option,” he said. “The Liberals were afraid to take this to a vote in the legislature so that’s why they’re desperate enough to do this.”

Delaney said there will be effort made in organizing the anti-HST vote for next September but organizers will focus instead on using recall legislation to remove sitting Liberals from their seats.

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Simon Fraser University public policy professor Doug McArthur said the Liberals are trying to buy themselves time to persuade voters that the tax should stay.

“This is going to draw out the issue over a longer period of time,” McArthur said. “The Liberals were not ready to go to the legislature over this because they’re afraid they can’t hold all their MLAs when it comes to a vote, so they’re going to take their chances. When the going is tough, their thinking is buy time.”

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