The HST disaster continues for the Liberals

Check the websites for the major media this afternoon - the Times Colonist, Sun, Province, Globe and Mail, CBC - and you'll find coverage of documents released under FOI which challenge the Liberals' claims that the HST was "not on the radar" before the 2009 election and raise large doubts about their optimistic statements about the economic benefits of the tax.
As well as revealing big problems with the implementation of the HST, this qualifies, I'd say, as a great communications disaster. The government could have released the documents at any time. It could have waived the processing fee on the first FOI request.
Instead, it set an $800 fee for processing and releasing the public documents. The media apparently decided to share the costs and the documents, while developing their own reports based on the information - to be released at the same time.
Which was very bad for the Liberals.
The Times Colonist editorial here offers a useful perspective.

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