Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the excellent speech by my hon. colleague and I want to follow up on his comments about the HST.
I know that the HST was first brought into this country in 1997 by the previous Liberal government, which signed HST agreements with maritime provinces. I know that the Liberals also supported the budget in January of this year, which contained several billions of dollars from the federal government to the provinces in exchange for their agreement to harmonize the taxes.
When the members opposite say that this is a provincial decision, I wonder why, if that is the case, they saw fit to provide almost $6 billion in federal transfer payments to the provinces as enticement for them to enter into the HST.
I would be interested to hear my hon. colleague's comments on that.