Mr. Speaker, I was at every minute of that five and a half hour briefing. In fact, I tried to extend it even beyond five and a half hours but was not necessarily successful at that. There were a lot of questions and a lot of fine details about the budget that needed to be analyzed so that is why members of the Liberal Party of Canada were definitely there, including our finance critic.
One of the key questions that I had at that time was actually not about an element in the budget but rather about an element outside of the budget. The Conservative government announced a home retrofit tax credit. It was a bit of a storefront political move that it hoped would scope a lot of favour among Canadians. What we realize now is that when Bill C-10 was tabled, actual legal standing for the home renovation tax credit, were absent. We found out during the course of the briefing that there was no intention of actually even making legal force to the home renovation tax credit until the fall of 2009. In other words, if a second budget implementation bill were tabled in the fall of 2009, we could expect passage, at the very earliest, around November 2009.
The government has indicated that the program will expire on December 31, 2009. It will not be available after that point in time. In other words, realistically there will only be one month of certainty when the full details of that program are fully exposed to Canadians and yet Canadians are expected to go out and make expenditures toward that program and apply for a tax credit that does not yet have legal force. No details have yet been provided except for the pamphlet that has been administered by the Canada Revenue Agency.
In addition to the home retrofit tax credit, for which we do not actually have details, there is also an ecoENERGY home retrofit grant program. Will Canadians be able to apply for both programs using the same receipts for renovations to their home, yes or no?