Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the Minister of Industry on his fine defence of the harmonized sales tax. I will make a few comments and ask a few questions along the way.
I seem to recall that when I served on the Standing Committee on Finance three years ago and we were looking at the GST replacement, I reviewed what the Liberals said when in opposition. I found that the minister was a member of the Standing Committee on Finance at that time, or at least a member of a group that submitted a minority report to the government of the day suggesting a solution to the manufacturers sales tax which was not a goods and services tax. It was not the GST. He opposed the GST. I seem to recall that he supported something completely different which was more along the lines of the single tax that the member for Broadview-Greenwood was proposing.