Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to listen to the opposition talk about the fact that not one province has signed on to this bill.
There is a reason for that. The provinces, with the exception of Quebec, enjoy the fact that the government collects the taxes and the provinces do not have to take the heat for it. When filing income tax in Ontario there is a section which gives the formula for calculating provincial tax. If the tax is being done by the taxpayer or an accountant, when they get to that page they are still in the mindset that they are filing their federal income tax and they are not thinking about the fact that there is a totally separate regime of tax collection at every provincial level. Why would the provinces want to kick up a fuss about this? The provinces want the federal government to have a system of tax collection that lets them off the hook and simply allows us to transfer the money. It is not a surprise at all.
It is also not a surprise to me that not one province has signed on to this. And I have not received one phone call in my constituency office in Mississauga about this issue. And yet, as members I am sure will admit privately at least if not in this place, this is a bill that has had extensive work in this place and in committee. It has been kicked around, dragged around in every one of our caucuses. It has had presentations made. It has been analysed from one end of the legislation to the other and yet there is not a public outcry or concern being expressed that we should, as the member says, scrap this piece of legislation. I believe there is a reason for that as well.
We all talk at times in this place about there being only one taxpayer. I use the example often of the ad I saw in a newspaper that had a mobile sign outside of a private garage called Paul's garage. The sign said “Our price includes the PST, the GST, the EHT, the MBT, the MPT, the UIC, the WCP and the CPP”. On the bottom it said “We would have included profit but we ran out of room”. The point I make is that we have a lot of taxes. Mr. Sekora, nice to see you. We have those taxes simply because—