By ThinkPol Staff

The umbrella group campaigning to repeal the Speculation Tax introduced by British Columbia’s NDP government has enlisted the help of a controversial global public relations firm that gained notoriety for promoting big tobacco and asbestos industry interests.

The group behind the Stop BC’s Speculation Tax petition^[1]https://www.change.org/p/british-columbia-government-stop-bc-s-speculation-tax joined forces with chambers of commerce, industry groups representing tourism and construction, and development industry lobbyists to launch Scrap the Speculation Tax campaign[re]http://scrapthespeculationtax.ca[/ref].

The domain name registration for the group’s website scrapthespeculationtax.ca shows Hill+Knowlton Strategies as the domain registrant^[2]https://who.is/whois/scrapthespeculationtax.ca.

Hill+Knowlton Strategies became infamous for running campaigns to promote the interests of the tobacco industry^[3]https://www.alternet.org/story/50359/how_a_pr_firm_helped_establish_america%27s_cigarette_century and asbestos industry^[4]https://cprlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/AIA-Article-AJPH.pdf among many other controversial clients.

Interestingly, BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson, who’s a strident critic of the Speculation Tax^[5]http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/speculation-tax-kelowna-forum-1.4588539, has acted for multinational tobacco companies against the BC government, as the province sought to recover billions of dollars spent out of the public health-care budget to treat people with smoking-related diseases such as emphysema and lung cancer^[6]https://thinkpol.ca/2018/02/05/bc-liberal-leader-batted-big-tobacco-bc/.

An Insights West poll^[7] found that more than four-in-five (81%) British Columbians believe support the speculation tax targeting vacant homes whose homeowners pay no income tax in BC^[7]https://insightswest.com/news/british-columbians-welcome-budget-proposals-on-real-estate/.

The tax rate is set at 0.5% of the property’s assessed value for this year, but will rise to 2% next year for foreign nationals and satellite families and 1% for Canadians who don’t reside in British Columbia^[8]https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/taxes/property-taxes/publications/is-2018-001-speculation-tax.pdf.