Mr. Speaker, in her speech the member gave some indication of how much people dislike this new tax based on the emails, phone calls and letters that she has been receiving. That is all borne out by the Ipsos Reid Canwest poll just released yesterday, which is certainly bad news for both the Liberals and Conservatives in the House. It showed that over 74% of the people in Ontario are against this new tax.
The member for Mississauga South seems to be suggesting that somehow offsets are being offered by the government, but a lot of money is involved in this tax.
The Manitoba speech from the throne on November 30, just a few days ago, clearly stated that:
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 to Manitoba families--
That is $400 million with only one million people. Let us extrapolate what one would get in Ontario which has multiple times more population.
We are talking about huge dollars here. When the member for Mississauga South talks about some income tax cuts to compensate and other compensations that Dalton McGuinty is going to give out, believe me folks, there is a lot more money here than the government is pretending. Huge dollars are involved here and that is what this is all about.