Mr. Speaker, the member should start practising his lines for next July 1, when taxes go up all over Ontario and people start paying tax on a lot of things that they did not have to pay tax on before.
The member is trying to have it both ways. He is following his caucus line here in supporting the Conservatives and the closure motion on the actual bill itself and trying to defend it. I do not think it is going to wash, because we have done enough surveys to know that 80% to 85% of the people are against this tax.
The minister is basically trying to drive this through the House just days before the Christmas holidays and pretending that somehow the devil made him do it and that he really did not want to do this, but we have numerous quotes that we can give in the House. One of them is from the 2006 federal budget. It says, “The government invites all provinces that have not yet done so to engage in discussions on the harmonization of their provincial retail sales taxes with the federal GST”, yet the member is trying to pretend that this is all being driven by the provinces.
Manitoba had the good sense to say no. The throne speech given on November 30, just a few days ago, stated, “Manitoba is rejecting an invitation from the federal government to introduce a harmonized sales tax. As proposed, the HST would impose more than $400 million in new sales tax costs on Manitoba families at a time of economic uncertainty”.
Who is the member trying to kid?