Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for a terrific speech on Bill C-62. I know he has been involved in political life for a great many years and I would hazard a guess that in terms of response, this is probably one of the biggest issues that he has had to deal with, by the sounds of it.
It is also borne out by the fact that just yesterday Ipsos Reid and Canwest news released a survey that showed that a whopping 74% of the people of Ontario are opposed to this HST. That is without their knowing the sneaky way the government has gone through the time allocation and closure motion process to try to ram this through just before Christmas, when in fact it could have introduced this legislation a couple of months ago.
In fact, it does not have to do it right now. An amendment moved by the member for Vancouver East just yesterday was rejected by the other three parties, the axis of taxes. It proposed that we would deal with this bill in the normal process: it would go to the Standing Committee on Finance, and public hearings would travel around Ontario and B.C. to hear from the public. What could be wrong with hearing from the public?
Preston Manning would be absolutely disappointed to see what the government has been doing. Complicit with the government are the Liberal members. They are the enablers here. They are the ones who are actually making this happen; without them, this would not be happening.
I would ask the member if he would like to make some further comments on the whole sorry process we are dealing with.