Madam Speaker, I find this quite interesting. We have put forward a motion today to simply stop collecting a tax which was intended to be collected while we had a deficit. All we are doing is saying to the government that it should now stop collecting that tax and it should stop collecting GST on taxes on fuel.
That little simple request is being countered by all sorts of high powered arguments by the other side. They say no, they will not do that. It is as if a youngster came to my house and said “I want a bowl of soup because I am hungry” and I said “Well, because you did not ask for the whole kettle, I am not going to give you the bowl”.
I do not think the government recognizes what is happening here. It talks about the hon. member from Pickering who has worked on this problem for so many years. How ineffective. He has worked for two years and the government has not listened.
Now the government is blaming us because we are not allowing a motion which simply says that the Minister of Finance should talk to the provinces. Frankly there is not a thing we can do to prevent the Minister of Finance from talking to the provinces. Let him do it. He does not need our approval. He does not need the approval of this parliament. The government has thrown in a red herring in order not to deal with the real issue, which is simply to vote in favour of stopping collecting the 1.5 cent per litre surtax that the government imposed on us along with the GST.