Madam Speaker, I am speaking today against the harmonized sales tax and the way it is being rammed down our throats.
Northern Ontarians will be punished more than anyone else in Ontario under the yoke of this tax because we in the far frozen north already pay more for gas, home heating and transportation than people from the sunny south. This new tax will only widen the cost of living gap between north and south Ontario.
It is supposed to increase our competitiveness and productivity according to the Conservatives, but to do that, it shifts the tax burden from big businesses to families. That is the wrong way to balance our books, and the middle of the deepest recession in decades is the wrong time to do it.
This tax is inherently regressive. It hits those who have no choice but to spend large portions of their income and it favours those with income to save. Those with the lowest income have no choice but to pay it and sacrifice elsewhere. This HST will hit those hardest who can least afford it overall.
An average family of four will have to pay about $1,500 per year more in my riding. The number of items they will see tax hikes on is astounding. I will not read the whole list, but here is a sampling: gasoline, Internet bills, mobile phone bills, hydro, home heating oil and gas, mutual fund investments, snow removal, ice rink rentals, taxi fees, kids' hockey for goodness' sake, air fare, train and bus tickets, new homes, dry cleaning, carpet cleaning, haircuts, home renovations, commercial property rights, campgrounds, vitamins, gym fees, green fees, accounting fees, legal fees, landscaping, postage, veterinary fees, motor vehicle services such as towing, magazines, and the list goes on. Even our funerals will cost 8% more.
Why on earth are we even considering this bad idea? The government says that it is supposed to help business, and maybe it will help some of its big business friends, maybe that is true, but many small businesses have written to me saying that they are opposed, no matter what the corporate elites in the Ontario Chamber of Commerce say.
I would like to quote the Canadian Federation of Independent Business survey of 105,000 of its members. Fully 75% of its members fear the HST will be a big negative. Their customers, facing such a high tax on local products and services, will be driven to the underground economy, to online foreign suppliers, or simply not make that purchase at all.
CFIB's Ontario director said, “Governments have clearly dropped the ball in their handling of this critical tax reform initiative”. He went on to say, “the decision to finalize the terms and conditions of the HST, without public consultation, has generated mixed reviews and serious concerns within Ontario’s small business community”.
Voters have long enough memories to remember the GST. The auditor general found, when the GST was introduced, that many people took their activities underground to avoid paying the tax. With the way the HST is structured, there will be a lot more attempts at tax avoidance and a lot of out-shopping.
Does the government really think it is good fiscal policy to bribe the Ontario and B.C. governments with over $6 billion of taxpayer money, borrowed on the open market, to raise our taxes? This, at a time when it is running an astronomical debt.
Here is an idea for the Minister of Finance, who claims to be helping small business. Instead of raising taxes on ordinary people, why does the Minister of Finance not cut small business taxes instead? That is a much better way to increase our competitiveness and productivity on a similar scale, plus it has the added bonus of increasing innovation in our economy, something the HST will not do.
There is also the question of how this tax is being rammed down our throats in the most undemocratic way imaginable. Suspending democracy in this way to ram legislation through in mere hours might be expected in war time or in the case of a national emergency. However, this extraordinary measure is being used to impose the tax on Ontarians and British Columbians without consultation. Really the minimum we can do here is to hear from ordinary Ontarians and British Columbians about the HST. We need some public participation and co-operation here. This will impact their lives in so many ways.
I myself find the fact that committee only has four hours to study the bill when we see it, and until 3 a.m., to be ridiculous. Is the committee actually supposed to do its due diligence under such conditions?
The Liberals should be joining us to demand transparency and accountability from the government instead of once again giving it a blank cheque. Instead, the Conservative government, supported by the Liberals, has pushed Motion No. 8 to limit democracy.
People across my riding and across northern Ontario have written to me on the HST, including many first nations, wanting to know why we would not be consulting with them, asking if there were not treaty rights on taxation to be considered. In fact, residents of my riding of Thunder Bay—Superior North, whether members of first nations or not, would like to be consulted on the HST before it is imposed on them.
The Liberals and Conservatives, supported by the Bloc, in their HST coalition, and we remember coalitions here, apparently do not want to hear from them or from other Ontarians or British Columbians. Residents of northern Ontario will be astounded at the actions of the Conservative MP for Kenora and the Liberal MP for Nipissing—Timiskaming, who have both voted to impose the HST and betrayed their own constituents.
They must know that we were sent here to Ottawa to represent our constituents. I know their constituents overwhelmingly reject this tax grab. They are not standing up for those constituents. Instead they are voting to ram the HST through with no consultation, no chance for committee study and a severely constrained debate.
Apparently they are fine suspending democracy to do it. They are fine with not even being able to see the bill we will be voting on until literally the last minute. I guess I should not really be surprised by this. This is really just more of the same regressive policies of Conservative and Liberal governments.
It is another tax grab in the grand old tradition of the GST, that other Conservative tax. Remember when the Liberals promised to scrap it and then did not when they got in. There is not much light between the Liberals the Conservatives on this issue or many others. They boost returns for corporate elites on the lame excuse that they will use those returns to benefit the rest of us. Do they seriously expect us to believe that the oil companies will pass the savings on to us at the gas pumps?
The Conservatives also claim this is a provincial decision, another yarn Canadians do not believe. If this is purely a provincial decision, why is the finance minister on record selling this tax to the provinces? Why is his signature on agreements with Ontario and B.C.? Why are we voting for it, in just a few hours, here in Ottawa and not in Toronto?
I am proud that the NDP was the only party to have consistently fought the GST, which was a Conservative tax grab that became a Liberal legacy. The HST was also a Liberal idea and now it is a Conservative plan. My party, once again, has been the only one that consistently opposes it as well.
I am proud to stand today with New Democrats to once again fight the HST in Ontario and British Columbia.