Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm sure Mr. Chambers is greatly affected by this in his riding, so there may be some further discussion if I leave anything out that pertains to his experience.
I just wanted to say, on behalf of the Conservatives, that while we understand that the NDP and the Liberals might have some ideological convictions here with regard to having a tax system that they believe needs to be fairer, the challenge is in the implementation. This provision of the so-called luxury tax is really a producer tax, Mr. Chair.
This is what I'm afraid of: Number one is that the boating industry, when you look at the PBO study on this, is going to be bearing the brunt of it. In fact, the sales are going to be taken out of their sails. They are going to be bearing this the most.
What does that mean? It means that when you take a 15% hit just because of this new tax—15% between all three of them, with the majority on the boating sector—it means you're just not going to see the investment in boat manufacturing upgrades in Canada.
Mr. Chair, I've spoken with some of the affected manufacturers, and they think it's going to lead eventually to job losses. While some people take issue with the consumption by some of the people who buy these vehicles, those are actually where all the upgrades and where all the specialized work happens. If there are fewer orders, there will be fewer sales and less profit, and right away there'll be less investment.
Where's it going to go? We've just given the Americans, those against whom Canadian companies compete.... People will be going to where there is no tax on it.
Mr. Chair, I understand the sentiment. I think everyone needs to pay their fair share. In this case, who's going to be paying for it? It's going to be the worker who gets cut. It's going to be the upgrades that never happen. It's going to be an industry that's now saddled.
I'll just give one last example. In my home province of British Columbia, a luxury tax was already put in place by the NDP government. In B.C., you're not going to be hit just once, by your provincial government; you'll be hit twice. Guess what happens then, Mr. Chair? You're going to have the GST applied on both of those taxes—a tax on a tax.
I don't think government members understand. I think they believe that this is the right solution, but at the end of the day, we're going to end up with fewer jobs. This is not a luxury tax per se; it's a manufacturing producer tax. It's going to cause those fields—the air industry, the car industry and the boating industry—to all take a hit on this.
We will be fighting against this. We don't believe this is the right way to grow our manufacturing sector, grow jobs or see more investment in Canada. We know that this will be the exact opposite. I think the PBO's report illustrates that. I would just point to that testimony by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.