Thank you.
Mr. Chair, each contractor has a different way of pricing the jobs and whether or not they include the HST or, in our case, the GST nationally in the price of their projects. So, indeed, for those who have kept the tax as a separate item, it showed up immediately on July 1 as being 14% in Nova Scotia instead of 15%.
On the extent to which other trades and suppliers and other contractors in the new home construction have been able to pass that on to the consumer, in one fashion or another it did get passed on to the consumer. The important thing is that each of those businesses does have to take a regular analysis of what its costs are and what its overheads are running at and what level of profit is feasible. So I'm sure that 1% reduction was included in those recalculations, which some businesses do on a monthly basis and others less frequently. It does go into the calculation.