Mr. Speaker, I took a lot of economics courses at university, on top of finance, accounting and a couple of political science courses, and I would like to go back to the professors and tell them how politics really works. That said, one of the things I did study was economics.
One of the problems with a PST, the way it is currently administered, is the cascading effect of taxes. It becomes a surtax on business, because when businesses buy inputs, they have to pay tax on them. It discourages investments in Canadian business.
I will not get into the politics of the HST. I will say though that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty was the gentleman who made the decision. He is the leader of the government in Ontario. He made the decision in Ontario, as did Premier Gordon Campbell in British Columbia. Nobody is forcing them to move toward an HST.
That said, be under no illusion, they are reducing the input tax into investment into Canadian jobs. That is why they did it, to make Canada more competitive, not less competitive.