Mr. Speaker, I will try to help my colleague. I do not want to sound like I am being unfair to the Liberal Party, because it is sort of like jumping up and down on Jell-O.
Regarding his question about where the NDP stands on the HST, if we search the words “flip-flop on HST” on Google, guess what comes up? It is not the Conservative Party. Everybody knows where the Conservatives stand. They are rotten to the core. What comes up is the Liberals.
Just this past September, a visitor from Harvard University denounced the HST. What did he call the HST? I am not going to use the Prime Minister's name, but he used the Prime Minister's surname which begins with an “H” and said it was his sales tax. He said that the Liberal Party was opposed to the way the Prime Minister was going around the country forcing these tax harmonization agreements.
Now that the Liberals have had to come under the wing of the Conservatives again, they are trying to make this an issue of the right of provinces, when their own leader was flip-flopping on this.
I am trying to find where the party stands on everything. When it came to Kyoto, the Liberals voted to kill Kyoto. When it came to pay equity, they voted to kill pay equity.
Then they decided they were going to stand up and say that the Prime Minister's days were numbered because they suddenly discovered evolution and developed vertebrae. What did they do? They voted against the home renovation tax credit that they previously supported. They then voted against the extension to EI benefits.
But now when it comes to a tax that will squeeze little old ladies on their home heating fuel, now when it comes to a tax that every time we go to the gas pump we are going to pay an extra 8¢, thanks to the Liberal Party and thanks to the Prime Minister, guess what? Now they are back onside.
The problem with the Liberal Party is that it stands for nothing. On the HST issue, the Liberals have to be willing to take complete credit for the fact that people in Ontario will be paying hundreds of millions of dollars more at the gas pumps every year with the HST when they pay for their gas because of the Liberals' support.
I would like to end with a quote from Dimitri Soudas, who should now be supporting the Leader of the Opposition, but then he was attacking the Liberal leader and he was responding to the HST. He said, about the Liberal leader's then opposition to the HST:
When you're an opportunist like [the Liberal leader], you think nothing of saying one thing in public, another in private.
Here we are, being forced to rush through a bill that nobody has ever seen, that will have profound implications for citizens across Ontario and British Columbia, that will deny treaty rights to first nations people, and the member thinks that the only just thing to do as a Liberal is to get it through as fast and as quickly as possible so there is no accountability and nobody will check. First nations families, senior citizens, those on fixed incomes will all be left out in the cold for Christmas, but the Liberals will try to sneak back with the Conservatives and pretend they had nothing to do with it.
Will the member at least stand up, be accountable and say, “Yes, we as the Liberal Party completely side with the Conservatives, as we do on all great matters of principle, and support this regressive tax”?