Two referendums have shaken their respective provinces – one that never happened and another with a shocking result.

Manitoba’s legally required PST referendum was cast aside before a single citizen could vote while British Columbia’s TransLink referendum saw nearly 62 per cent of voters reject a half percentage point sales tax increase.

The TransLink result is shocking. TransLink is the regional mass transit authority for Metro Vancouver. It proposed a $7.5 billion expansion and proposed to pay for it by raising the local sales tax by half a percentage point. Municipal leaders, unions, business groups and environmentalists all backed the plan. Those in favour spent about $6.7 million, most of which came from taxpayers, to sway voters their way.

But there was a problem. It was not that people didn’t want mass transit – getting from point A to B is an important part of life and mass transit solutions are worth a look. The problem was that people didn’t trust TransLink with more of their hard-earned money.

TransLink wastes a lot of money. Since 2000, TransLink has lost at least $250 million by failing to collect fares properly. It has almost 400 employees making $100,000 or more. It installed 13 TVs, at a cost of $40,000 each, and half of the TVs didn’t even work.

Jordan Bateman, the Canadian Taxpayer Federation’s BC director, jumped into the referendum debate from the start. The CTF doesn’t oppose mass transit. In fact, Bateman released a detailed plan showing how to go ahead with the expansion without hiking taxes. He raised $40,000 in donations and led the charge to stop the tax hike.

Against all odds, almost 62 per cent of citizens voted against the tax increase. They made it clear that less waste rather than more taxes should fund any TransLink expansions. On one hand, leaders in favour of the proposal lost. But what they really have is the chance to regroup, root out waste, and do what families do every day – make priorities.

Compare the TransLink referendum to the Manitoba government’s failure to hold a legislatively required referendum before increasing the PST. On one hand, the Manitoba government got its tax hike while TransLink did not. But Premier Greg Selinger is paying a price for reaching into people’s pockets without asking.

Premier Selinger, like every leader, is constantly bombarded by competing interests. Small business wants tax cuts while unions want raises. Drivers want better roads while parents want new schools. And the debt collectors always want payments.

Saying no is hard for even the strongest leaders and Premier Selinger could have used the people’s support to take a stand for fiscal restraint. Or he could have made his case for higher taxes. There might be Manitobans who are willing to accept a higher PST, but nobody is happy the premier didn’t give them their say.

But there’s another benefit that TransLink supporters are enjoying and Premier Selinger threw away.

Politicians are gamblers. Every election they bet their livelihoods on the whims of the people. But every gamblers knows a bet that you can’t lose is a good bet and a referendum offers elected leaders just such a wager.

The political leaders who supported the TransLink proposal lost the referendum, but they didn’t lose their jobs.

Premier Selinger denied himself that opportunity. If he’d lost the referendum, he could have adjusted his course accordingly. Instead, he got his tax hike, but came within a few dozen votes of losing his leadership and faces the spectre of entering an election with the lowest approval ratings in the country.

It will be tempting for some political analysts to consider the TransLink referendum a failure and the Manitoba decision to circumvent the people prudent. Those politicos will lose their jobs when they’re wrong. In a democracy, when in doubt, it’s always right to ask the people.