First of all, Madam Speaker, I am not on the government side. I am on the opposition side. I am just like one of them. Second, I was not part of the past Conservative government that put the GST into place, but I agreed with the tax 100% and I will tell members why.
I own two companies. As a contractor and as a painter, before the GST came into effect in 1990 when I wanted to buy a gallon of paint it would cost me 18% on that gallon of paint. It never showed because it was incorporated into the price of the gallon of paint. On a roll of masking tape, I would pay 11%.
When the GST came along, the companies would have had to get out of that tax and include the 7%. Some of the companies did that. They took the manufacturers sales tax out and just included the 7% but there are a lot of companies that did not do that. They kept the manufacturers sales tax as a profit and included an extra 7% on top of that. That is what made it a bad tax but it is not the fault of the previous Conservative government. The GST was a good tax.
Talking about the HST, this government felt that the HST was not a good tax. They brought up the HST but now we are paying 15% instead of 7%. In my store alone my business went down by 40% and my gas consumption went down by 90% but my electricity bill went up by 8% and my oil bill went up by 8%. Do you call that fair?
If I were here in the province of Ontario or in Manitoba or further west, I would only pay 7%. Why should I have to pay 15%? That is why I am saying to this government to give us a tax break so that we can really create jobs in this country, especially in New Brunswick. We cannot create the jobs we need because this government is choking us to death with taxes.