Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member for Elmwood—Transcona asking this question because that is the perversity of what the Conservatives are trying to impose on Ontarians and British Columbians, with the complacence of the Liberal Party.
Essentially, all of these little tax credits that they have been doling out while they shovel money off the back of a truck to the most profitable banks and energy companies in Canada, in the guise of this somehow being some sort of economic strategy, in the end, with the HST, they end up taking more than they have given over the past couple of years.
They give out these little tax credits to ordinary families who are struggling with lower incomes over the last 20 years. Two-thirds of Canadian families are actually earning less now than they were 20 years ago. Their tax load has been doubled. Liberal and Conservative economics is really an oxymoron. Essentially what they have done is produce permanent poverty for the middle class in this country. Instead of addressing those overall economic fundamentals, they impose the HST, so community businesses have less and will have to cut back on their staff and employees. Ordinary Canadian families have less to spend and less to clothe their kids, less to pay for their housing, less to pay for their meals and all of those things. It is absurd.
That is why, in this corner of the House, we are saying to Conservatives that they have received a very deep warning from New Westminster--Coquitlam and they better heed it.