Mr. Speaker, for months the Liberal government has been unlawfully charging the goods and services tax on Hydro One's debt retirement charge. A debt payment is neither a good nor a service and therefore is not eligible to be taxed. In fact, debt is by definition a deferred tax. This makes the GST on the debt retirement charge an unconstitutional tax on a tax. That is just the start.
As a result of the decision of the Ontario government to refund all higher than expected electricity bills retroactive to May, the federal government is now in receipt of millions of dollars in GST revenue on electricity charges that have been retroactively cancelled. When a customer returns a good or service to a store and gets a refund, the GST on the cancelled good or service is always returned to the customer. That should be true in this case too, but the federal government has been strangely silent about the millions it has collected in GST on the refunded portion of Ontario's hydro bills.
The return of these millions of dollars to Ontarians across the province is a legal obligation of the government. Why will the government not do what is right--