On one million people, Madam Speaker.
People back home are certainly going to be wondering why the official opposition, the Liberal Party, is not opposing anything but are going meekly along, held by the chain of the Conservative Party, to get through this because they do not want to deal with the political fallout of their actions. Well, they have to address the political fallout of their actions because they will be profound.
We see seniors organizations, CARP is speaking out, that want to be heard. The Conservatives do not want to let them speak. We have talked to the real estate agents and the real estate organizations that are saying that first-time homeowners are going to be denied the chance to buy a home. This is in a time of a struggling economy. The Conservatives and the Liberals are shutting down those voices from coming forward.
We have spoken with the people who are in financial planning, who are trying to help people make their savings, who are saying the additional 13% in Ontario and 12% in British Columbia will have devastating effects. In fact, we even hear Liberal members standing and saying that this is an issue that has to be addressed.
Yet, the Liberal leader and the Conservative leader are saying that such issues of effects of a major shift in the tax burden from the corporations to senior citizens, to those on fixed incomes, that is something that the House of Commons is not going to debate. I say it is pitiful of the Liberal Party members. If they are not going to do the job they are paid to do, they should just leave early and head off to the beaches of Cuba now. People paid them to come and stand up to this gang of Mike Harris cronyites and the former reform party.
This is a serious issue. We are talking about a massive shift in the tax burden. The Conservatives are trying to move it through quickly. They do not want to have people review what is in this legislation. They do not want to have witnesses.
I would like to ask anyone from the Liberal or the Conservative benches to have the guts to stand up in this House and tell us whether or not they have crunched the numbers on what it is going to cost at the gas pumps? I know they have. They know what it is going to cost. They do not want the public to know. They do not want the public to know what it is going to cost. They do not want the public to know what it is going to cost to seniors who are living in downtown condos on fixed incomes.
They want this to go through because they think the public is stupid. They think the public can be spun off with their cheap ten percenter attack ads and their wedge issues and their mailings, accusing people of being anti-Semitic. They think they can create these sideshows so that people will lose sight of the fundamental fact of what is happening here in the House of Commons, which is that we have a Conservative Party, aided by its very weak colleagues in the Liberal Party, putting political expediency above the interests of senior citizens.
I read the newspapers all weekend. I watched television. I was on Google every 20 minutes. I wanted to know what action was being taken to respond to the concerns of citizens. We are getting hundreds of calls. We are getting thousands of letters. We know this is a serious issue.
The premier of Ontario said that he had never heard a single complaint. I find that hard to believe. The backbench Conservatives have said that it does not really affect them even though it was their idea in the first place. Then we looked at what the federal Liberals were talking about. Well, they were all meeting at the Château Laurier with Yon Brutus from York Centre, making their plan to get rid of the visitor from Harvard.
Let us think about it, what is up with this party that it is always the average people who can sit and wait until they finish their treats. It is like watching the last days of the Roman Empire with the Liberals in their togas, sitting at the Château Laurier saying, “I think I should, as a young Liberal, be chosen as the right hand of whoever is going to take out the present Liberal Leader”.
These were the shenanigans they were doing this weekend, when they should have saying, “How do we stop the HST? How do we actually deal with the fact the government is bringing closure on a bill on taxation that will silence the voice of members of Parliament from representing their constituents, their senior citizens, their first nations whose treaty rights are being abrogated across the board?”
No, they were all over at the Château Laurier saying, “I can get this post, and you can have that post, if we just get rid of the latest Liberal figurehead”. Meanwhile, the Conservative juggernaut moves on. I find it an appalling abdication of their fundamental responsibility to fight back against this right-wing agenda.
We talk about the growing malaise in the House of Commons. We saw young people risking their lives today on the roof of the Parliament Buildings to remind the government about its failure on the tar sands, and who supports the Conservative government? It is the Liberal Party. It is shameful.