Mr. Speaker, the speech by the parliamentary secretary was very interesting and reminded me of a couple of things. It reminded me of the Bart Simpson “I didn't do it” skit and the movie Naked Gun, where Leslie Nielsen is standing in front of a fireworks factory he has blown up and all of the fireworks are going off and he says, “There is nothing to see here”.
This is a remarkable implementation of a tax on Canadian citizens that can only be facilitated by this chamber. The parliamentary secretary should understand that we are going to have to borrow Canadians' own money to put this tax back onto them.
I had the Parliamentary library do some research and it estimated that the $5.9 billion payout or buyout that we are providing British Columbia and Ontario over 10 years to do this will actually cost us $9.9 billion over those 10 years at the annual borrowing rate of the Government of Canada. That estimate comes from the Parliamentary research service.
Therefore, we are borrowing Canadians' own money to bring in a new tax on top of them. This is only being facilitated by the actions of the government here today.
We heard testimony yesterday at that industry committee from the tourism sector. There has been no sector study done on the effect of this tax. If one looks at Ontario and British Columbia, we already have a declining rate of tourism right now. The parliamentary secretary noted that other nations in the world have this tax, but not United States, which is our number one source of tourists. The tourism industry is predicting right now that the tax will result in a loss from that market, and has done its own independent studies showing that.
Why is the government not studying the industries that will be affected by this new tax, which only it is capable of bringing in?