Pubdate: Fri, 06 Dec 2013
Source: Trail Daily Times (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 Trail Daily Times
Contact:  http://www.traildailytimes.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1043
Author: Art Harrison
Cited: Sensible BC: http://www.sensiblebc.ca/

SENSIBLE BC HITS TARGET IN WEST KOOTENAY

Canvassers fall short in other parts of province as deadline nears

The petitions are in, the canvassers exhausted, but it looks like
there will be enough signatures to make up the 10 per cent of
residents required for the Sensible B.C. campaign to call for a
provincial referendum for the decriminalization of marijuana ... at
least in the Kootenay West riding.

A collective sigh of relief can be heard coming from the petition
organizers in the region with only days left before the petitions need
to be delivered to the Elections B.C. office in Victoria Monday.

"We just got the confirmation 20 minutes ago," said local organizer,
Susan Yurychuk. "On November 18 we were at 56 per cent (of their
target) and people were ready to give up but I told everybody to go
out and get 22 more signatures and they did. We needed 3,162 for the
10 per cent in our riding and we got 3,733."

While organizers in the Kootenay West riding are happy with their
efforts, the provincial campaign, organized by pro-cannabis activist,
Dana Larsen, doesn't appear to have garnered enough signatures in
every riding in the province, as is required by the referendum
legislation.

"We're not going to have all the signatures in every single district,"
said Larsen. "The process is designed to be difficult, gathering that
many signatures in every riding in the province is not meant to be
easy but we anticipate hitting our targets in the East and West
Kootenay, as well as in many other areas."

The provincial referendum legislation, which was enacted in 1995,
requires that campaigners gather petitions with signatures from 10 per
cent of registered voters in each of the 85 ridings in the province
within a 90 day period in order to force a referendum on one of the
fixed election dates. All canvassers for any campaign must be
registered with Elections B.C. for the petitions to be declared valid.

The process has only been successful once in nine attempts to force
referendums in B.C., in 2011 when it was used to compel the B.C.
government to hold a referendum on the much maligned Harmonized Sales
Tax (HST).

Larsen said the campaign went well in numerous areas of the province,
with areas such as Nelson, Creston, Vancouver Island, Penticton, and
the Sunshine Coast gathering enough signatures quite quickly but areas
such as the Fraser Valley, Cariboo, and Surrey presenting particular
challenges.

Larsen said he was surprised by the reaction of some opponents to the
legislated petition process.

"We found that, for some, stigma was an issue," Larsen said. "Some
people said they'd love to sign but were afraid the RCMP or the
government would know that they had signed the petition and harass
them. It was a baseless fear but that's where some people were coming
from.

"There also seemed to be some people who feel they had the right to
abuse the canvassers; we had volunteers harassed by irate people, spit
on, one volunteer had the window of his truck smashed and Sensible BC
signs stolen, people called the RCMP many times on canvassers but at
no time were any arrests made. I didn't expect the level of hostility
that we saw in some places."

Sensible B.C. volunteers in Vancouver will spend the weekend
collecting petitions from outlying areas and collating them before
sending them on to Elections B.C. by Monday to be officially tallied
up before getting a final count on the campaign's efforts.

Although hopes aren't high for a successful petition campaign Larsen
said that, for himself and Sensible B.C. it's not the end.

"There's no dates yet to start again but we learned a lot. We raised
an army," he said. "We had a lot of great canvassers out there and it
really started to build momentum. If we had the momentum at the
beginning of the campaign that we did at the end it would have passed
by a landslide. We have to evolve, have to re-organize. But thanks to
everyone for their support and thanks to everyone who signed. We'll be
back next time."
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MAP posted-by: Matt