Campaign to stop Site C has large mountain to climb

The man behind a long-shot petition campaign to stop the Site C dam project agrees he needs a new phone.

“The one I’m using right now usually quits working in mid-conversation,” Ion Moruso said with a laugh on Wednesday. He also doesn’t usually have his cellphone turned on.

Sorting out some basic communication issues would seem to be top priority if Moruso, a retiree from Duncan, is going to achieve his goal of getting at least 315,000 British Columbians to sign petitions now available under the BC Recall and Initiative Act.

He has three months to make the target, and it must include the signatures of at least 10 per cent of all voters in each of the province’s 85 electoral ridings.

A couple days into the campaign, Moruso says he doesn’t have anyone doing canvassing for signatures in the Okanagan.

“I’m hoping that as word of this campaign spreads, more volunteers will come forward and do the hard work of getting signatures,” he said.

“It’s a big task, for sure, to get so many signatures,” he said. “But you climb a mountain one step at a time. Or you get tired and go home.

“Whether this succeeds or fails is really up to the people of B.C.,” he said. “If stopping Site C is something enough people really care about, we’ll succeed. If it’s not a big deal, it will fail. It’s that simple.”

Moruso says he’s opposed to the Site C dam project because the power isn’t needed, now or in the future, and the enormous cost means it will never be paid for.

Only one petition drive under the provincial act has ever succeeded in reaching the signature target.

That was in 2010 when opponents of the proposed Harmonized Sales Tax gathered enough signatures across B.C. to force the then-Liberal government to hold a mail-in referendum.

Voters decided to ditch the HST and revert to a combination of the GST and the provincial sales tax.