Thank you very much.
This is, of course, the removing of HST on home heating. Whether you're in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Alberta or Ontario, we've all noticed the additional cost of heating our homes. It's an issue all across the country, but particularly in rural areas, where oftentimes the only option is to heat your home with either oil or natural gas. The cost of heating has gone up dramatically, and heating, in this great northern country of ours, isn't an option.
If the idea, as my colleagues from across the aisle say, is to drive up the cost of carbon-based fuels in order to have people make other choices, and you have no choice but to heat your home with propane, natural gas or oil, it's inelastic. This is just basic economics. My one wish is that we could have an honest conversation about the impact of the carbon tax. I think it would help not only us on the Conservative side but the Liberal members as well.
If we have an individual who is perhaps on the lower end of the economic spectrum, a vulnerable person who is desperately trying to get by in a cold Canadian winter, I think it's a reasonable thing to do to reduce the cost of home heating by simply removing the HST on home heating. This is eminently reasonable. I am against the carbon tax, and our party is against the carbon tax, but it really doesn't have anything to do with personal ideologies with respect to environmental issues. What it has to do with is whether you have compassion.
Do you have compassion for the single mom trying to get to the end of the month in a cold winter? Do you have compassion for the worker who is working overtime just to pay the carbon tax on his gas and his home heating? Do you have compassion for the individual who is perhaps looking at freezing next winter because they can't afford heating?
It's really a compassion test. It's not even an environmental, carbon tax or economic issue. It's a compassion test. I'm hoping that everyone in this committee will pass this compassion test.