Mr. Speaker, another great irony of this whole debate today is the fact that not only are the Conservatives bringing in this legislation against the will of the people of British Columbia, not only are they doing it in a way that belies some of their commitments of the past, some of their very strong and, we thought, deeply held convictions for more democracy in this place and better representation for people of western Canada, but they are doing it at the behest of a provincial government, led by Gordon Campbell, that lied to British Columbians in the last election. It bald-faced lied, saying it had no interest in a harmonized sales tax before the election. What did it do afterwards? It immediately moved to bring in that same HST, that same sales tax.
That kind of behaviour would have been good reason for the Conservatives of old, for the Reformers of old to disassociate themselves from the provincial government. However, no, the Conservative government takes up the challenge, leads the charge, enables that kind of government to bring forward this type of legislation.
That is a significant change in the way the government and the Conservative representatives from British Columbia have chosen to lead the way and to handle their representation of the people of British Columbia.