Mr. Speaker, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley has raised some of the key questions that have been before Parliament and will probably come back in a legislative form.
With respect to the HST, since we came back and learned about the deal between B.C. and the federal government, we have not heard one question from the Liberals on this. The NDP has consistently raised this question, trying to find out when the negotiations began with the federal government and the B.C. government. People in B.C. would like to know whether there were discussions and, as we suspect, whether they were during or prior to the provincial election that was called.
The member is perceptive in outlining the very strange and twisted record of the official opposition, as those members try to manoeuvre around what their position has been.
When the Liberals voted 79 times to support the Conservatives on the budgets in particular, the HST was there. I do not remember hearing a peep out of Liberal members at that time, not even the ones from B.C. or from Ontario, where we now know this deal is under way.
It is the same with softwood lumber. Anybody who has followed the softwood lumber debate and the agreement that was made, knows the NDP members fought that tooth and nail the whole way.
Unfortunately, the official opposition has done this manoeuvring. The Liberals are really dealing with a self-interested, partisan question around the election as opposed to the priorities of Canadians and what we need to work on in the House.